An old US Army saying goes, “if it moves measure it, if it doesn’t paint it.” Amusing perhaps, but in many organizations I look at this adage can be readily applied and the KPIs end up adding little value whilst consuming vast amounts of time and effort. With some respondents preferring to name dashboards, benchmarking or Balanced Scorecards (which require a substantial metrics components) we can safely assume that the actual number of KPI users is even higher (and almost universal).Īlthough KPIs can be a powerful performance management tool, organizations should heed a cautionary note.
(The figure below shows the top ten tools). It is therefore unsurprising that a recent global survey of over 3000 organizations found Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to be the most widely used tool for managing performance, with a usage rate of about 75%.
Organizations, whether commercial or not-for-profit, have long been obsessed with managing and measuring performance and there is little sign of this easing up.
