I love the data.

If you want to create a high performance culture, then it needs accurate performance measurements.

The organization needs clearly defined KPIs that are:

• Aligned with what’s important for the customer;
• Regularly reported against;
• Accurate measured;
• Whose importance is understood by the organization

With the right KPIs we can ensure that we are focusing on the right topics. We understand where we are performing well, and where we could do better.

We can use fact-based decision-making, using the KPI performance reports, to identify where best to allocate our resources.

We can use these reports to communicate our performance with the Business, to understand whether what we see as good performance is what’s seen as good for the business.

We need to ensure that our KPIs are relevant.

There is nothing worse than a department reporting green performance but the Business is feeling it’s red.

We need to break these KPI reports down to individual team level.

This allows us to hold the individual teams accountable for their performance, for their contribution to the success.

This allows us to be able to say well done, when the KPIs exceed agreed targets.

This allows us to create a meritocracy, where each teams performance can be accurately judged against what’s important for the customer.

We can use these the KPI’s as a basis for performance bonuses, ensuring that any bonuses paid are aligned with achievements that are important for the business.

If possible I would share not only the performance reports with the Business, but also the Bonus Targets based on these reports.

This allows us to show to Business that we are not only focused on what’s important for them, but that we are also incentivized on what’s important for them.

There are additional benefits of this approach such as, it allows us to define what success looks like.

We can monitor our progress towards success, and make the right decisions to ensure that our progress is maintained.

It creates a clear, well understood, merit based process.

Teams can clearly see and understand their own performance, then take accountability for turning it around.

When it comes to end of year reviews we have a clear measure of team performance, so we can make objective assessments rather than subjective, which increases the fairness of the process.

If we have detailed, accurate performance based metrics, we can also use techniques as Six Sigma, in order to drive performance even higher.

One of my favourite sayings is “in God we trust, everyone else please bring data”.