Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs, 3rd Edition

Chapter 11Finding Your Organization's Operational Critical Success Factors (Stage 4)

Overview

Critical success factors (CSFs) are operational issues or aspects that need to be done well day-in, day-out by the staff in the organization. This chapter looks at the alignment between CSFs and external outcomes, highlights the importance of CSFs’ identifying that this is a missing link in management theory, that an organization has typically five to eight CSFs, and that CSFs should be the source of all important performance measures—the winning KPIs. This chapter also outlines the tasks required in this stage and gives instructions on how to access, free of charge, a PDF of the suggested worksheets and checklists to be used by the KPI project team.

I was first introduced to critical success factors by the talented people who wrote the KPI manual for AusIndustry (an Australian government department). They defined critical success factors as the “list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and well-being.”¹ I have always seen these as operational issues or aspects that need to be done well day-in, day-out by the staff in the organization. They are about what the staff inside the organization can do, and should do.

I see the critical success factors as more fundamental to a business than its strategy. An organization can still succeed without a well-formulated strategy, and many do. Whilst I am aware of the significance of a ...