KPIs at scale?

As a reminder, I read this article1 a short while ago, and am sharing my thoughts in individual blog posts.

Here is my 4th: KPIs get messy at scale

As mentioned in the article, senior executives and managers often look at a lot of data, and decide one metric or another needs to be improved. From there, they offer employees incentives (or require compliance) to focus their efforts on improving the selected metrics.

At the CEO-level, picking one or two key metrics (or priorities) seems reasonable. As this cascades down one level to the VP’s, they might each add one or two of their own KPIs to the priority list. By the time this reaches the front-line worker — especially at large companies — it can be quite a long and messy list. I’ve personally seen a non-ironic list of 120 number one priorities.

When everything is #1, nothing is #1.

This is a particularly dangerous affliction for many companies, and leaves employees at every level to decide on their own which priority they will focus on. In this environment, no two employees are likely to have selected the same one, so their efforts do not compound into greater accomplishment. At best, everyone is making minor progress on their chosen priorities. At worst, two (or more) employees end up choosing contradictory priorities, with each one’s work cancelling the other out. That costs the company a whole lot of time and money with little progress to show for it.

One solution to help address this overload is to be clear about the one or two company-wide priorities that every level of the company should focus on, and then repeat that often. Holding regular progress reviews, sharing the results, and reminding everyone of the key priorities will help hold the additional priorities at bay. There is no guaranteed solution that will prevent other priorities from creeping in, but regularly making the key ones a topic of company-wide discussion will certainly help.

There is definitely a self-discipline aspect at play here. Leaders need to exercise discipline when cascading priorities, and avoid the temptation to “just add one more” priority. Employees also need to exercise discipline in how they plan & prioritize their day-to-day work: are they making choices for the clear, company-wide priorities, or are they losing focus and spending time on non-priority work?2

My key point here is that focus & discipline aren’t just things coaches talk about to athletes. These are skills we all need to develop and train throughout our career, and utilize to help our teams achieve meaningful results. Starting with leadership to to select and focus on a key priority or two, and maintaining that throughout the organization3, significantly raises the likelihood of success in achieving them.

I’ll end with one example that comes to mind: Disney’s theme park priority of cleanliness. Whether you are an actual janitor, or a ride-operator, or a concession salesperson, or a corporate manager, every employee focuses on picking up trash & debris and keeping the park clean. This is a key priority from leadership, scalable across 10,000+ employees, and directly observable/measurable.

Other posts in this series:

• Post 1: Overwhelming details for employees

• Post 2: Overwhelming details for customers

• Post 3: Misaligned incentives

• Post 4: KPI’s at scale

• Post 5: Everything is connected

• Post 6: Empowered guidelines

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1. I originally read this article in Apple News+ which doesn’t provide direct links to articles outside of the News app. I tried to find the article on Entrepreneur Magazine’s website, but found 0 search results for the title of the article as well as the author’s name. (Both seem like bad user experience choices to me, by the way.) I ended up finding the article on the website I linked to above as a last resort.  ↩︎

2. To be clear, not everyone can work directly on a key priority all the time. I understand administrative work, bug fixes, and other activities need to be worked on to keep the company running smoothly. The point is to not let these non-priority tasks impede or prevent the priorities from being accomplished. If they are indirectly supportive, or tangential without compromise, then by all means get them done.  ↩︎

3. I am fully aware that companies with a significant number of employees can certainly manage to do more than two things at once. The key here is not to confuse tasks or projects with priorities. Leaders need to ensure the priorities they are selecting are meaningful to the business, and scalable across the employee base.  ↩︎