You may have heard the sentiment that you can only improve what you measure, which I think most people would agree to be true. But another great axiom is that measuring everything is like measuring nothing. Organization’s can be guilty of measuring so many things that most employees (other than salespeople) become confused as to which measures are reflective of their performance.
Clear measures help people move toward a goal, giving them tangible feedback on their performance. People will focus on what you measure, so it’s important to spend a sufficient amount of time determining what those measures should be and getting the employee’s input and buy-in to those measures.
The following three qualities are important to consider when defining measures for your business.
1) Evaluate the measure to insure it’s evaluating the correct behavior. Think about the most basic purpose of the process and see if the measure is reflecting that purpose.
2) Measures that use ratios are generally more meaningful than absolute values and a relative measure provides a more useful comparison over time.
Measures should be reflected as trended data because the meaning is much greater.
