Analytics the Right Way

Chapter 5Making Decisions Through Performance Measurement

One of the simplest ways we expect to use data to make decisions is through performance measurement. “The weekly report” or “the real-time dashboard” are, at their core, intended to show “what’s happening with the business.” Simple, right? So, why do weekly and monthly reports so often tend to grow into cumbersome monstrosities? Why do dashboards seem to have a lot of information on them without illustrating what is going well and what is not? The answer is that, while measuring performance seems simple, it requires several key elements that can feel messy and intimidating, and human nature, as a result, pushes us to skip them.

A Simple Idea That Trips Up Organizations

Put simply, performance measurement is defined as follows:

Objectively and quantitatively measuring where we are today relative to where we expected to be today at some point in the past.

This is an exercise in looking at the past to the present: marking the current point in time, where key metrics stand, and how those metrics compare to the expectations of our past selves.

When it comes to measuring people and teams, specifically, there are a number of established frameworks for performance measurement: management by objective (MBOs); objectives and key results (OKRs); balanced scorecard; and objectives, goals, strategies, and measures (OGSM) to ...