Step 5: Deploying the KPI (part I)

1. Lose Weight
2. Getting Organized
3. Spend Less, Save More
4. Enjoy Life to the Fullest
5. Staying Fit and Healthy
6. Learn Something Exciting
7. Quit Smoking
8. Help Others in Their Dreams
9. Fall in Love
10. Spend More Time with Family

Recognize any of these items? They are the top ten new year resolutions made by people in the US. There are other lists available, but most of them have a huge overlap. Less than half of the people who say they make resolutions maintain them through the first 6 months (46%). (University of Scranton. Journal of Clinical Psychology)

Changing behaviour is though and often thought too lightly. The underlying purpose of a KPI should be to change behaviour. That is to say to root out actions that antagonize performance and boost those actions that increase it. To my (humble ;-) opinion the deployment step is the most underestimated step in creating KPIs. Nobody will argue that this step is redundant, but the execution is most not done accordingly to its importance. I will explain here why I think this is the case. Here are the most common mistakes that are being made when implementing KPIs in the organization

Just activating a KPI might give you the impression that behaviour will change accordingly all by itself. But setting an indicator to see whether performance changed over time will not change the behaviour itself needed to accomplish the increase in performance. It like with the resolutions. They also are  meant to motivate people to change their behaviour.  Timothy Pychyl, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada, argues however that people aren't ready to change their habits, particularly bad habits, and that accounts for the high failure rate. Another reason, says Dr. Avya Sharma of the Canadian Obesity Network, is that people set unrealistic goals and expectations in their resolutions.

These effects have been studied to great extend and we can learn from these studies in relation to best implement KPIs (so they actually do what they should do). These are eight common tips that are given to make resolutions work better.

1. Focus on the deployment of one (or just a few) KPIs at a time
2. Set realistic, specific expectations of the speed by which the performance should increase;
3. Don't wait till things almost go wrong to make resolutions. Make it a yearlong process, every day;
4. Take small steps. Many people quit because the goal is too big requiring too big a step all at once;
5. Have someone close to the department (but not part of) that you have to report progress;
6. Celebrate your success between milestones. Don't wait the goal to be finally completed
7. Focus your thinking on new ways of doing things (out of the box). You have to create new pathways to change habits (what got you here, won’t get you there;
8. Focus on the present. What's the one thing you can do today, right now, towards your goal?

This is part one of the blog on Deployment. Next time I will discuss some other things to consider when deploying a KPI (like target audience, responsibilities, format, frequency, etc).