KPI-driven Leadership
KPIs are important tools.
KPIs are great because they try to bring a data-backed approach to measure very abstract and complex goals and objectives. This is important because humans are faulty creatures, full of biases and preconceived ideas. We all only have our own experience to draw from, so our views and opinions are shaped by only a small sliver of reality.
In the allegory of Plato’s Cave, people are sitting in a cave with a fire behind them projecting shadows against the wall in front of them. The shadows contain very valuable information about something in their reality; however, they have stared at the shadows so long they have begun to mistake the shadows for reality itself.
For me, KPIs are those shadows; they are real and important indicators of something, but they are just projections of that something.
KPIs are not the goal.
That deeper thing that we really seek underneath the KPIs are our goals, objective, purpose, and even values. I can’t presume to know what the goals of your company or yourself are, but I can give an example.
Revenue is not a goal. Revenue is an indicator that you are adding value to someone else’s life. Similarly, profit is not a goal. Profit can be a good measure of how efficiently you are creating that value. Both of these are valuable tools as they provide a fairly fungible way to measure these otherwise abstract goals, but they are not the goals in and of themselves.
I like to think of KPIs like a speedometer in your car. If I want to get between locations A and B (goal), then I can track my speedometer to see how I am doing. It is quite likely that if my speedometer is 60 mph vs 30 mph, I am likely to get there roughly twice as fast. Great!
However, this isn’t the whole story. You could be going 60mph in the wrong direction. Or you could have your speedometer at 100 mph, but you could be spinning your wheels in a ditch, and if you are only staring at your speedometer, that last case is far more likely. This is the danger of optimizing on KPIs and losing track of your overall goal.
Vision and values drives your goals.
Whether you are seeking direction in your life or a CEO casting the vision for a Fortune 500 company, don’t settle for surface level KPIs. Paint a picture that is truly compelling. Paint a picture for a world you want to live in, and then invite other’s to join you on the journey there.