CHAPTER 7

Generate Potential Key Performance Indicators

What business questions do you need answers to, and once you have those answers what action would you take or what decision would you make?

—TOM GONZALEZ, 2008

 

THE METRICS YOU USE ON YOUR DASHBOARD ARE CRITICAL to its value to your business. Ignoring important metrics leads to tunnel vision and bad surprises. Basing decisions on the wrong metrics can create stumbles even by generally successful companies. Starbucks and the airline and car companies I've worked with all have stumbles in their history.

So, how do you get the “right” metrics, the ones that work? I offer two stages: discovery (generating potential metrics) and confirmation (testing, selecting, and updating the metrics). In ...

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