KPIs & Dashboards Resources

As the middle market strategy execution experts, we get asked a lot of questions about KPIs or Key Performance Indicators for firms to manage the metrics that matter. In fact, we get hundreds of thousands of yearly views on our KPI blog posts alone! Our comprehensive KPI Guide is one of the most valuable free resources that we offer to the middle market community free of charge to help companies determine the right set of KPIs for their business if they don’t have the resources to utilize our expertise and KPI dashboard software to create a balanced scorecard (BSC) of their performance.

Measuring the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is vital to the health and success of your business. However, when we onboard new clients, we find that some of them are uncertain about what they should be measuring and how they can use these powerful tools.  They often ask "Why do we need KPIs?" or "Why use KPIs?" or "Why are KPIs important" as they think their way of doing things isn't broken.  Effective KPIs are important metrics to make sure that you can accomplish any business objective.  The importance of KPIs can't be understated.

It may still feel like the middle of winter to some, but you might find that it is time to do some spring-cleaning when it comes to your KPIs. We recommend tracking no more than 8-12 KPIs at a time for each team, but we’ve noticed that some of our clients get trapped by what we call “KPI creep.” They may start with a list that makes sense for their business, and then over time, the KPIs just get rolled over from one quarter to the next and one year to the next, and they keep adding to the list as they develop new critical numbers or want to move the needle on different metrics. Before too long, their KPI dashboard is like that nightmare closet; you know, like your teenager’s closet, when you open the door and stuff falls out on your head because it is just so full and disorganized.  If this is happening to you, you need to perform a KPI Audit to get back to measuring what matters.

Many planning tools are used on an annual basis—yet, they are often overlooked in the middle of a pandemic like COVID-19. There is an opportunity, now more than ever, in your team's need for direction, a way to focus their action and a bumper rail to keep them moving forward. This will allow you to harness the energy of your team rather than sinking in the quicksand of panic.

Many executives have heard of SWOT but aren’t familiar with how to leverage it for their business plan, much less how to utilize it in a time of crisis. Every business I work with has seen affects from the pandemic—either positive or negative. Let’s look at how to utilize the SWOT approach for either effect by making it a cSWOT (Crisis SWOT). A SWOT analysis about covid 19 is key to establishing a healthy decision-making capability and communication rhythm in your company during trying times.

It is important to grow the top line of your business on an annual basis, but you also need to make sure the bottom line is healthy which can help fund that growth. 

It is no secret that your people are instrumental to the success of your business. In order to have a great company, you not only have to hire the right people and get them in the right seats as Jim Collins says, you also have to work to retain and engage those people once you have them.  The best companies use key performance indicators for employees to drive performance and ensure that they are getting the most out of their most important investment - their employees.  Having the right set of quality metrics can greatly improve your performance management in creating a high-performing team.

These are crazy times we find ourselves in right now. I have heard more than one person say that they have never experienced anything like this in their lifetime—and a few of the folks are a bit more senior than me! That being said, I am so proud of the companies I work with and the friends that I have that run their own businesses. Everyone is doing everything they can to take care of their employees and service their customers to the best of their abilities. Most are doing a really great job despite the social, environmental and supply chain challenges.

For many, it's time to roll out those 2021 plans and kick off some new initiatives to help your company build back or accelerate growth in the new year. This may present additional challenges in the current environment in which many teams are working remotely or in hybrid scenarios where some are in the office and some are not. Truthfully, even if your team is all together in the same room, getting aligned around your company's new initiatives can still be a big challenge.

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are not for the faint of heart. Any CEO who has navigated those waters will tell you it is a tremendous challenge to blend cultures, systems, processes and teams successfully. The statistic is 70-90% of M&A's fail -- that's a scary number! Instead of focusing on that metric, let's talk about numbers we should be measuring around M&A.

Every acquisition deal starts with an incredible amount of due diligence. Are the cultures and values compatible? Do the product lines and customer bases support each other? Do the numbers work and take us down a path of growth? Ultimately, if the deal goes through, benefits have been seen by both parties. Now, it's up to the newly-merged company to both preserve the current value of the organization and meet growth projections. It's a delicate balance.  

How much did misalignment cost your organization in 2020? Misalignment comes from poor planning, and it results in poor execution and missed numbers. The missed numbers happen in many categories: poor customer delivery, lost revenue, employee frustration/bad morale, great people leave the company and the loss of great customers. You don't want your team looking like this one.

Because Rhythm strategy execution software acts as a framework for pulling together into one single system many improvement initiatives and management tools that are popular among manufacturing companies, many of our most successful clients come from the manufacturing industry. One area that our clients come to us for help with is determining the right manufacturing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for their manufacturing metrics dashboard to drive performance.  Some production managers are not sure where to start, and many are measuring so many things that their manufacturing metrics are just noise, not driving action or change to drive your operating efficiency and product planning KPIs and KRA (key results areas.)

Manufacturing KPI Examples

At Rhythm Systems, we work with clients to ensure they are measuring the metrics that matter to allow them to achieve their dreams and goals. Our strategy execution software allows you to create KPI dashboards to ensure team accountability, alignment, and execution-ready quarterly plans. The staffing industry KPIs for recruiting that we have compiled below represent many of the metrics that can be measured. However, make sure that you pick the top recruiting KPIs that work for you and your team.

It can be intimidating to sit down to a blank slate and begin working on your company’s first official KPI dashboard! Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of technology and software companies doing just that - beginning their KPI journey in Rhythm. So how do you get started?

First, it’s helpful to think of your business in terms of 4 key areas: Employees, Customers, Processes and Revenue. In order to have a clear high-level view of the health of your company, you should have visibility on all four areas. What can you measure to give you the proper insights on the health of your employees, customers, processes and revenue?  

If you are still stuck, we’ve compiled the ultimate KPI cheat sheet for software companies! Below are some of the most common KPIs we’ve seen from technology companies using Rhythm for each of the 4 key areas:

Research shows that our economy is largely being driven by middle-market firms, especially those in the service industries. Key Performance Indicators (KPIS) are one of the most effective tools for service companies to manage their growth, cash flow, customer retention and customer satisfaction.  According to a press release from American Express: 

After recently reviewing thousand of Annual Plans and Quarterly Plans, I can say without a doubt that improving employee engagement seems to be top of mind for everyone this year. How on earth do you keep today's dynamic and diverse employees happy, engaged and productive? It's the million dollar question that we ask ourselves year after year.

According to Gallup, companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147%. Gallup also concluded that 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged. So, how do you know if your company is on the right side of those statistics?  You need to start measuring employee engagement KPIs this quarter so that you can keep your A Players and reduce employee turnover.  This is not just a function for the human resources department, the best team managers measure employee satisfaction KPIs on their teams.

As Chris Cosper detailed in a previous post, we have the ability to record 3 types of metrics in our Rhythm cloud based strategy platform:

•      KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
•      Critical Numbers
•      Targets

The body has four main vital signs that doctors use all around the world to determine the condition of a patient. The four vital signs are body temperature, pulse rate, respiration (breathing) rate and blood pressure. These are measurements of the basic functions that keep you alive. They need to be functioning properly in order for anything else to work, including your brain! These metrics are just four of the hundreds of potential measurements that a doctor could use to assess the health of a patient. However, the four vital signs are the most important elements of a patient’s current state of health. Once the vital signs are stable, the doctor can begin to diagnose the long-term treatment of the patient, but they don’t do that until they know the vital signs have stabilized.   Do you know the vital signs for your company's success at achieving its strategic plan and key business objectives?

As a training and on-boarding expert at Rhythm Systems, I know a lot about KPIs. Recently, I’ve also learned a lot about OKRs. Many of my newer clients have come to us for a systematic way to implement their OKRs. As I help these clients map their goals into our software, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether the KPIs I know and love have a place in this world of Objectives and Key Results. I’ve come to the conclusion that while KPIs and OKRs are different, there’s a clear benefit to having both.  They are both instrumental in goal setting and performance management.

Most Companies Fail Due to Poor Strategic Execution

As a fan of Blue Ocean strategy, you already know how important it is to have the right strategy. But, a great strategy executed poorly produces lackluster results and missed targets. Unfortunately, most companies and top executives focus their efforts on developing a strong strategy but spend very little time converting those strategies into “execution ready” plans that clearly define the actual work team members need to do to bring the 3-5 year strategic plan as determined in your planning process to fruition.

Businesses looking to implement goal setting best practices are often drowning in a sea of acronyms that can be hard to navigate. What’s better - MBOs or OKRs? Where do KPIs fit in? Should I have SMART goals or stretch goals or something else? There are lots of tools and frameworks and different acronyms out there, but there are some key elements of effective goal-setting that underlie all of the most effective business and performance management goals.

First, let’s clarify the terminology a little bit. I’ll give a brief explanation of what MBOs, OKRs, and KPIs are and what the pros and cons may be for each.

According to a recent article I read in Harvard Business Review, "most employees want to be productive, but the organization too often gets in their way. Our research indicates that the average company loses more than 20% of its productive capacity — more than a day each week — to what we call 'organizational drag,' the structures and processes that consume valuable time and prevent people from getting things done."  What productivity KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and metrics can we measure employee performance, employee satisfaction and employee engagement?

The article continued to say that "people have huge amounts of discretionary energy that they could devote to their work, but many are not sufficiently inspired to do so. Virtually every employee can bring more to their job, but many don’t invest the additional ingenuity and creativity that they could to improve productivity. Inspired employees bring more discretionary energy to their work every day. As a result, they are 125% more productive than an employee who is merely satisfied. Stated differently, one inspired employee can produce as much as 2.25 satisfied employees."

Wow! I was stunned by this data!  

Our first-ever virtual Breakthrough Conference is just a few weeks away! Here's a sneak peek so you know what to expect from this can’t-miss event.

As a CEO, you have specific challenges from a leadership perspective. You have to keep your team connected to your overall strategy, make sure they get the resources they need to be successful and drive focus & accountability at every level—this is no small task, for sure! CEOs who use Rhythm have some incredible resources right at their fingertips to help them do just that.

What's the difference between KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and Quarterly Rocks? This can be a very confusing question, especially for companies who are new to using the Rockefeller Habits or Rhythm's Think Plan Do as a methodology to grow their company and drive their execution. It can be confusing at first as there are some similarities between the two. Both use clear success criteria to measure results or desired behavior, and quarterly rocks (often called priorities or projects) can often influence the success of the KPIs and metrics you are monitoring.

Written by Cindy Praeger and Eskinder Assefa

A fairly significant body of research now clearly shows that the reason why a number of mid-to-large companies face is not that their strategies were not sound, but because they were unable to create a culture of strategy execution to perform well on those otherwise sound strategies.  Successful teams bridge the strategy to execution gap through Intelligent Work.  

In 2020, it’s hard to have confidence in your ability to achieve your goals. We survey our contacts regularly on how confident they feel about successfully completing their goals, and with all the looming uncertainty around the external factors impacting success (namely, the global pandemic and economic crisis), confidence scores have taken a hit since March. This is understandable considering the state of the world.

Leadership 101 tells us that it’s important to set clear and specific goals for ourselves and for our teams in order to achieve business goals and objectives. In other words, all of our business goals should be “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.) In order to craft a good smart goal, you need to take a couple of steps back and look at the whole picture - why are you doing this? The best SMART goals always start with “why.” Are you taking an educated guess at what you think a good goal is going to be that will equate to business success? Are you confident enough in defending that guess to someone else? If you fully understand the “why” behind the project, it is much easier for you to define your time-based goals. Goal setting theory clearly states that the better you write your SMART goals, the better your team will perform.

In working with hundreds of mid-market CEOs as a consultant at Rhythm Systems, I often get asked about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). As a data nerd, I love having these discussions and helping our clients rank the top in their industry. Often, I find they are really asking, “How can I fix my weekly staff meeting to have a data-driven discussion that helps me exceed my goals?” It doesn’t really matter what KPIs and OKRs you are measuring if you don’t use them to drive the right discussions each and every week to make the adjustments in real time as needed.

As a team leader, you own the key results for your team, meaning that you will probably have a handful of KPIs on your list (2-3) that are the main metrics for your team’s success. For example, if you lead a sales team, you will probably have some key metrics around revenue and the number of deals closed. Your team members would have their individual KPIs that roll up, but you likely own the total number for the team. For a product leader, you might have metrics around NPS scores or product adoption that you own, finance team leaders will have financial KPIs to measure performance for the employee effectiveness of their team, and so on in other cross-functional departments.

Many people wonder and worry about whether or not they are doing a good job and if their boss is happy with their work. It is one of the consistent emotional challenges employees face in the workplace, and sadly, most people don't know what to do about it.

One way this challenge has been dealt with is by having the dreaded annual or quarterly performance review. That's the day when you go and find the document (if you had one) from your last review and hope that you were able to improve your work performance from last time you had a formal discussion with your boss. This is usually a lose-lose scenario. You dread these meetings because they feel so formal and awkward. Your boss dreads these meetings because they have to try to figure out something smart, insightful and helpful to say to you to make them look and feel like they are being a good boss. Once it's over, all breathe a sigh of relief and are glad they don't have to do that again for another 3 months—or even a year.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are key indicators used to measure the success or performance of a business and are most commonly used to measure sales, cash and products. In any business, client retention is just as important as sales, but so often I see my clients forgetting to measure it or measuring the wrong things. I’ve learned from making this same mistake in the past.

We all know we need to be prepared for the worst—while striving for the best—when it comes to the effects of COVID-19, and the market has proven that leaders who remain calm and focused are better able to steer their team through turbulence and uncertainty. However, my experience is that many leaders and leadership teams do not know how to do this.

I'm being asked by CEOs worldwide, "What few things must I focus on now?" Even when leadership appears calm like a duck on the surface, many leaders today are paddling like mad underwater with only a finite few that have clear direction.

I previously wrote a blog titled 21 Production KPI Examples to Improve Manufacturing Performance, and many people were interested in learning more about how to measure and improve on-time delivery, one of the specific KPIs I mentioned. I am often asked how to improve on time delivery in manufacturing companies.  The on time delivery KPI time as one of their most important Key Performance Indicators as it is directly related to customer satisfaction and repeat orders.  So, let’s dig a little deeper into effective ideas to improve on time delivery.

In my initial blog “How to Create KPIs that Drive Your Company's Success,” we  focused on the most common form of metric, Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.  A future blog post will talk about targets and how to set them to drive your desired results.  Today, my post will focus on Critical Numbers, a special set of measurements that help your company drive towards one of its top goals.  An easy way to think of Critical Numbers is to think of them as “most valuable” or  MVP KPIs, the most important metrics for your company to track right now.  These MVP metrics are essential to the success of your business.

The Balanced Scorecard, originally developed by Dr. Robert Kaplan of Harvard University and Dr. David Norton, can keep your company balanced. They used this scorecard as a framework for measuring organizational performance through a balanced set of performance measures (as opposed to Wall Street’s need for short-term financial performance). Kaplan and Norton’s approach added non-financial measures to the standard financial measure of the time to more accurately focus on a company’s long-term success.

Here’s how they described the innovation of the Balanced Scorecard in chapter one of their book, page 7:

Since the release of Patrick Thean's book Rhythm, it has been so exciting to speak with people who are implementing Rhythm in all types and sizes of organizations.  It truly works for any business - regardless of revenue size or number of employees!

Many smaller organizations using the Rhythm methodology are using Excel spreadsheets to track their progress.  And, for many that works.  But for those who are now experiencing rapid growth, there comes a time when old systems no longer work.  You hit a ceiling of complexity, and I'm reminded of Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

Driving new sales revenue is a common theme that comes up with the clients I work with. In fact, I can’t think of many companies that have more sales activity than they know what to do with, and most are always looking for ways to build or grow their sales pipeline.  One of the first places we start is taking a look at their Sales KPIs to ensure that they are measuring the right metrics to grow their revenue by producing enough qualified leads for their sales managers to distribute to the team. 

There a lot of variables that go into building a great sales pipeline, and marketing plays a big part in developing marketing qualified leads (MQLs), but another big variable is measuring the right behavior that drives the right results with a great sales KPI dashboard. To do this, we must put the right leading indicator KPIs in place. It’s one thing to measure results indicators like Revenue booked, but unless the right activities are taking place, you are not going to hit your targets and your stakeholders are going to be disappointed regardless if they are internal or external. You need to develop the right sales leading indicator KPIs for your team to track your customer acquisition.

Managing a remote team is challenging, even in the best of times. In our current environment, it is really tough to keep the team engaged, focused and contributing to the company’s ability to survive and thrive.

Frequent check-ins are critical. Having 1:1 meetings with your team members, team huddles, and weekly meetings will help keep you on track. You need talk time with your team, and they need to hear from you often. This generates a lot of meetings, and for a team leader who is talking to a lot of different people all day long, it can be hard to keep track of the information you are gleaning from various team members.

Have you ever wondered just what is going on in your business, how well things are going, and why? How can you know for sure that your people and teams are focused and aligned to achieve your long-term growth strategies and goals? How can you ensure you are doing the right things to attract the best talent and keep them happy in your company so they won’t leave you? These are all questions that an Enterprise Work Execution Platform can help you answer.

With information moving so quickly regarding global pandemic COVID-19, many companies are facing the daunting task of taking care of their employees, customers and their bottom line in a fluid environment. We’ve already seen some companies using Rhythm as their tool of choice to keep everyone aligned and executing in lock step.

Each KPI and Priority should have clearly defined success criteria. What is success? What is failure?  Discuss, debate and agree as a team.

Sounds simple, right?  

For many teams, setting Red-Yellow-Green (RYG) business success criteria is a challenge. It doesn't come easily for everyone. Fortunately, it's a skill that can be learned. 

First and foremost, success criteria should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic & timely) red yellow green performance indicators are critical to hitting your goals and targets. Below are a few examples of using SMART red yellow green performance indicators in the real world.

My husband used to coach a 3- and 4-year-old soccer team (the “Gorillas”) at our neighborhood YMCA. If you’ve never watched toddlers play soccer, it is pretty hilarious. I remember one game, someone walked by the sidelines with a puppy, and every player on both teams ran off the field in the middle of the game to pet it! I also remember one game where little Petunia with her precious braided pig tails was the goal keeper (the kids rotated so everyone had a chance to be the goalie at least once in the season). A particularly big, fast kid from the other team kicked the ball right to her, and she quickly moved out of the way, turned to watch it go in the goal, and then clapped! “We scored!” 

Having the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on your dashboard is very important to ensure you are driving the right behaviors in your business, monitoring the right results, and making the right adjustments to grow your business and hit your targets. I often get the question, particularly with new clients that do not have KPI dashboards established, “What KPIs should we be tracking?”

And here comes the time-honored consultant response, “It depends.” I know—I am being a bit facetious, but it really does depend; it depends on the type of business, the maturity of the business, what problems you are trying to solve, what things you are trying to improve as well as who your stakeholders are. I could go on, but I am sure you get the point. That said, there are some KPIs that I believe should be on most CEO or leadership team dashboards.

In Rhythm software, there are few different lenses to view your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). You can view them in a Scorecard to ensure you have a balance between people and process metrics. You also have a couple of different ways to look at all of the KPIs in a particular group: either as an EnergyMap so you can see at a glance how the linked Individual Priorities are going, or on the 13 Week Race tab so you can see how the status of your KPIs has changed over the course of the quarter.

Finally, Custom Dashboards are perhaps the most powerful tool for viewing KPIs in your weekly meeting. Here, you have the ability to select exactly which KPIs you want to view together regardless of which group the KPIs are in. You can arrange your data to tell the specific story you need to hear. Here are a few examples of how you can use Custom KPI Dashboards to maximize your effectiveness:

We have all heard the saying "A fish rots from the head down," right? Not that I am comparing my CEO friends to fish, but it does drive the point home that creating a culture of innovation starts with you as the leader of the organization.

Peter Drucker, one of the fathers of modern business theory, said if an established organization is not able to innovate, it faces decline and extinction. I could not agree with him more, for in all of my years helping companies, I have witnessed far too many that wait until they are in decline or experiencing shrinking markets, stale product offerings or products that are being commoditized to begin innovating. They usually do not have the resources once in decline to be successful, which is why it is important to build a culture of innovation while your business is strong and healthy.