KPI Fever: Beware Magic Metrics
Every company I visit these days is talking key performance indicators (KPI’s). This tells me that people understand that financial metrics aren’t (and never have been) enough to measure organizational success. But I worry about how using the shorthand KPI for all non-financial measurement could doom companies’ efforts from the start. The problem is the [...]
Why are you creating your measurement management system – and do you really need a balanced scorecard?
A few years ago, I read an article by Ian Graham called, What’s Wrong with Targets? Graham made the case that setting targets or goals for employees creates the wrong kind of behavior. This is because it focuses the employee on the target rather than on the underlying processes that create value for customers and [...]
Getting Intangible Capital Into Your Performance Measurement System
Building a performance measurement system without the right foundation information would be like designing a dashboard when you have never looked under the hood of a car. Now, “wait a minute,” you will say, “I know my business inside and out.” And you probably do. But no matter how deep your personal familiarity with the [...]
Intangible Capital and Non-Financial Indicators
The lack of a clear operating story in today’s financials means that it is important to find non-financial indicators to enable an organization to track the progression of its work. The use of non-financial measurement is not new. Factories in the industrial era were not managed using just financial data. There were other kinds of [...]
Performance measurement is the new incomes statement
The Income StatementThe income statement is the universal scorecard for business. It is the way that a company tracks and communicates its progress month to month and year to year to tell its operating story. The key components are the revenues the company earns by selling goods and services to its customers, the direct costs [...]
The ABCs of Intangibles Assessment
Assessment is a word that you are probably used to hearing in relationship with tools in the human resources area. Myers-Briggs and DiSC are two well-known tools that are used to assess the personality of people. Most people in business today can tell you the letters of their own Myers Briggs type. Another kind of [...]
The ABC’s of Intangibles Assessment
Assessment is a word that you are probably used to hearing in relationship with tools in the human resources area. Myers-Briggs and DiSC are two well-known tools that are used to assess the personality of people. Most people in business today can tell you the letters of their own Myers Briggs type. Another kind of [...]
Five Reasons Your Organization Should Assess Its Intangibles
In posts over the past weeks, I have already shown you some simple but powerful ways of generating concrete information about your intangibles. The first is generating an inventory of key knowledge assets. The second is building a graphic or model that serves as a shared visualization of how your company combines and monetizes those [...]
The intangibles information CEO’s want
Every year, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) surveys CEOs around the world. Their 2009 survey asked CEOs about different types of intangibles information.
Four reasons why the old accounting models don’t work and won’t ever be enough to measure the intangible economy
Today’s accounting systems keep track of certain types of financial transactions. (and mis-reports intangible financial transactions). There is a need to get good financial information about intangibles. But knowledge intangibles are a different kind of asset. It is hard to imagine a time when financial metrics alone will be adequate on their own to measure [...]
