Reduce and Eliminate Excess Metrics

Reduce and eliminate excess metrics that micromanage behaviors and outcomes.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

It is still strategy deployment season, and I am even more deeply engrained in the thinking. As momentum builds and our 3D deployment work continues, number 167 is perfectly fitting. In a recent conversation with a CEO, I challenged her answer to the question ‘what evidence would suggest success in reaching your goal?’ There were far too many measures defined at levels well below her knowledge and level. My response was simple, ‘too many.’ We spent the next hour working to reduce and eliminate excess metrics that were meant to remove control and freedom from the process owners deep within the organization.

In one engagement, a plant manager was attempting to emphasize a KPI he believed was indicating the most likely cause of poor performance. His manager, the vice president, was focused on another, unrelated measure. I watched the back-and-forth debate spin and waste time as long as I could. I asked the Vice President how a change in the measure he was suggesting would impact the outcomes. He grew quiet and struggled to provide a clear answer.

The plant manager seized the opportunity and explained how the measure of focus he was emphasizing would deliver a significant performance improvement and align with the objective communicated prior. The answer was precise and on target. The Vice President was too far removed to understand which of the levers to pull, but with all the prescribed metrics thought he could make better decisions than his team.

Reduce and Eliminate Excess Metrics

That conversation hurt his pride but spared his reputation. Less is more is a perfect mantra for this challenge. Rather than trying to dictate the activities multiple levels deep, the simple request for a higher-level measure opens the opportunities our teams need.

The world changes every day. The way work was done last week is not that same as it is today, let alone the way it was done when you were there. Your role as sponsor is to set targets, not define processes. To wrest control away from process owners deep within the organizational structure, sponsors create more KPIs to micromanage decisions. Less is more for our process owners and for performance improvement. Spend the time to reduce and eliminate excess metrics and give control back to the local leadership. They really can be trusted.