Measuring happiness – Some practical advice for David Cameron’s latest idea

Dear Prime Minister,

I understand your point that we should not just think about money, but the idea of measuring the nation’s happiness, fills me with woe (and my happiness quotient dropped as a result).  Let me explain why I have some concerns about this idea by explaining the problems of measuring the nation’s happiness [...]

Refining and revising measures

Why do we use objectives before measures?  Because it makes it easier to refine and revise measures In the absence of objectives, people designing performance management systems often compensate for problems with measures by adding more measures in the hope that they are communicating and covering all the aspects.  This unfortunately leads to overload, confusion [...]

Principles of Effective Balanced Scorecards Part 4

Principles of Effective Balanced Scorecards Part 4 “The person who says it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.” Chinese proverb.

I’m reminded of this every time I work on measures for performance management in an organisation.

As you read this, just imagine you are in a workshop developing measures for your [...]

Principles of Effective Balanced Scorecards Part 3

Principles of Effective Balanced Scorecards Part 3

Like many organisations, this FTSE 100 Company’s executive team had a vast amount of data at their fingertips. Their monthly report contained around 120 measures. The Chief Executive could drill down to individual retail outlets, and look at Saturday’s product sales for all their categories, first thing Monday [...]