So, what do I mean by these statements and why are they so important in creating performance?

Visibility

• Make your team and business goals visible

It is absolutely critical to make your team and business goals visible. How? Ask your people – you’ll find lists, graphs, and all manner of summaries produced, and your people will find ways to define, measure and achieve team and business goals, as long as there is effective leadership, and quality management at a team level.

• Measure what is important

Be very careful how many things you measure – no more than 2-3 per team, and no more than 5 across the business. Measuring too many things results in confusion, and loss of energy and drive

• Manage what you measure

The Quality movement has the maxim of “manage what you measure”, but think about it – how can you possibly manage improvement, unless you can define

• where you are; 
  
• where you want to be; 
  
• and how close you are to where you want to be.

• Make the measurements visible

There is no point in hiding away the drivers of business improvement, as without visibility, your people will not be engaged, and therefore will not improve their clarity regarding what they really need to focus on.

Clarity

• Eliminate goals clutter

As above, assemble the goals from each team, and work through with your leadership team which of these goals are most important.

• No more than 5 KPI’s

Imagine your business is an F15 jet. You must know

• where you are; 
  
• where you’re going;
  
• how fast you’re going; 
  
• when you’ll get to where you want to;
  
• and most important of all, how to take evasive action when threats appear

How are you going to achieve all this with more than 5 KPI’s on your F15 cockpit? You’re not, as you’ll be shot down, and be dead!

• Drive these KPI’s and all related processes

Once you have the 5 KPI’s you need to relentless drive improvement for each one

• Reward your people around these KPI’s

People like recognition, and while some prefer a quiet word, and others crave group recognition, very few people actually want no recognition.
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If you want your business to achieve its KPI’s then be clear about them, drive them, and recognise your people when they achieve them, and do this consistently.​