#70 How Many Measures Do You Need?

If you're starved of any decent performance measures at all, or you're drowning in the overwhelm of too many, then you're also likely not making any decent progress on improving your business performance, or achieving your goals.

As mere mortals, we seem to get the best results when we can focus on just a small number of priorities. Remember this as you make that important decision about exactly how many - and which - performance measures will focus you to achieve your priorities, as properly and promptly as possible.

TIP #1: Prioritise your goals, and just measure the priorities.

Each quarter, I review my business goals and Results Map to set the 1 to 3 most important themes to focus on for the coming few months. I don't monitor everything in my business plan all the time. The data is being collected for these measures, yes, but I'm not reviewing those measures. Not until and unless they become a priority.

So it can help to think of your entire business plan as a rolling evolution. Your focus is always just on the most important goals, and as those goals are achieved, your focus moves to the next most important.

TIP #2: Expect that for each goal, you may need 1 to 3 measures.

Rarely does a single performance measure give you a complete enough picture of a goal or result you're chasing. For example, I use two measures to monitor a goal I have, that my customers spread the word about the value of my services: Net Promoter Score and Number of Customers Referred by existing customers. It means I can measure my customers intentions to refer and how this manifests into reality.

So make allowance for this when you prioritise which goals are the priorities to measure: each goal could have a few measures attached to it.

TIP #3: For any one person, 3 to 5 measures is enough.

Reaching performance targets, as with any form of change, takes effort over and above the doing of our everyday tasks. It takes thought, learning, analysis and experimentation, and time. If you try to improve everything that matters all at once, the effort is exponentially greater.

So at any one time, having just 3 to 5 measures with targets on your radar is enough. Get some real improvement in even one area, and you're streets ahead of making insignificant improvements in many areas.

TIP #4: Be disciplined to focus on the priority measures first.

Especially if you are reporting more than just the priority measures, the priority measures should be at the top of your performance review agenda, if not the entire agenda.

For example, my weekly reviews focus just on the priority measures for a single performance theme until I've achieved my targeted improvement. The theme comes from my quarterly review of priorities, such as growing the number of subscribers, growing revenue from a new product, or improving my customers' service experience.

TIP #5: Use monthly and quarterly reviews to check for new priorities.

With a strong focus on a few measures, you can make some great progress quite quickly. And as this happens, those few measures can become a lower priority relative to others. So a regular review of your complete business plan or set of goals is useful to choose new priorities.

But remember to let go of old priorities, take them off your radar. Your monthly review will pick up if they ever need your attention again.

A tool to prioritise your measures

The first step of measuring the right things is to define the results that are worthy of being measured. We use the technique called Results Mapping to do this with our clients. And I use it personally too, for my own business goals and measures.

Results Mapping lays out all the results that are implied by your business plan or goals (what's important to your business or organisation) and the cause-effect relationships among them. Each result can have 1 to 3 measures to monitor it.

It's all on a page, and this makes it easier to choose and visually highlight which results are the priorities right now. And it's these priority results we measure and monitor, until improvement targets are achieved. After that, the priorities are reassessed, and the highlighting changed accordingly.

Here's how to get the Results Mapping tool for yourself, go to: http://www.staceybarr.com/pumpshop/howtokitP1001.htm