Most people agree that measuring things is key for improvement. Most organizations have a basket of key measures on which they base their decision making. Pick a measure that’s regarded as important and spend a bit of time with one of the team that uses the measure (one-on-one, this isn’t about embarrassing people) and ask how they think that measure is calculated. Make sure you find out what they think is and isn’t included in the measure.

I’ve done this lots of times and have never once had two people come up with identical definitions (more often than not, they are nowhere near)

What’s surprising is that most people seem pretty confident that the definitions are nailed down, until you go through this exercise. They will sit in meetings, debating what certain measures are showing, without realising they have completely different perspectives on what the measure is actually showing.

The solution is pretty simple. Create a KPI database (even on a spreadsheet) that nails down a measure in as much detail as possible. Keep one master-copy that is accessible and use that as the ultimate reference for all calculations. Here’s a link to a free template

To read about all things KPI, have a look at Bernie’s website www.madetomeasureKPIs.com