Kaplan and Norton, in their ground-breaking book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action,  indicated that 16 weeks is sufficient time to establish a working balanced scorecard with key performance indicators (KPIs). However, organizations of all sizes and complexity stumble with this process, and 16 weeks easily turns into 16 months. The key to success is to learn from these 10 KPI implementation lessons:

1. Select a small KPI team to be full time on the KPI project.
2. Leading change the John Kotter way.
3. Start off with a six-perspective balanced scorecard (BSC).
4. Focus on the critical success factors.
5. Follow the 10/80/10 rule.
6. “Just do it.”
7. Use existing systems for the first 12 months.
8. Trap all performance measures in a database and make them available to all teams.
9. KPI reporting formats should follow the guidelines of the data visualization experts.
10. Embracing Peter Drucker’s abandonment rule.

Read an extract from the 4th edition Key Performance Indicators for more detail.

To get my latest work

Buy my toolkits and accompanying electronic media to get you started.

How to implement winning KPIs (180 page Whitepaper + electronic templates)

Finding your Organization’s Critical Success Factors – Toolkit (Whitepaper 115 pages+ electronic templates)

Newly Updated: Database of Measures and Associated Success Factors 4th Edition (Updated August 2019)