As a senior lecturer and principal research scientist for the MIT Sloan School of Management, Dr. George Westerman is a veritable authority in bridging executive leadership and digital innovation. So when he talks about how generative AI (GenAI) affects business strategy, we would all do well to listen.
In this lecture, Dr. Westerman demystifies GenAI from a management perspective. He also invokes his eponymous philosophy: Westerman’s Law or The First Law of Digital Innovation, which states, “Technology changes quickly, but organizations change much more slowly.”
With how quickly GenAI is evolving, integrating it into your business strategy is equal parts challenging and risky. Watch Dr. Westerman navigate this dilemma.
As 2025 rolls in, we want to give you, our readers, a little treat. We scoured our database and took a good long look at the articles we published in 2024 to come up with a list of what stood out the most and resonated with you each month of last year. Entry into the prestigious list was determined using three criteria: value (how informative and useful the article is to the strategy and performance management community), readability (how easy it is to understand the thesis and concepts presented within), and reach (how widely the article was viewed). Without further ado, here are the top 12 Performance Magazine web articles for 2024.
Beyond Remote Work: Insights and Strategies for Enhancing Employee Productivity and Performance
Promoting diverse work options is important because enabling employees to work in ways that align with their preferences is essential for maintaining and boosting productivity.
Key Safety Considerations for Generative AI Adoption in Business
With the advancement of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), security risks are becoming a growing concern. What precautions should organizations take to protect their data before adopting GenAI?
Leveraging Effective Performance Management Systems for Real Estate Success
A robust performance management system (PMS) is key to cultivating a high-performance culture. How can real estate companies tailor their PMS to align with their goals and secure a competitive advantage?
Establishing a data team from scratch can seem daunting due to its complexity—considering there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What key areas should organizations focus on to truly build a strong data team?
Business Process Reengineering: The Path to Maximum Efficiency
Business process re-engineering is a strategic approach that reshapes and optimizes workflows to boost efficiency and agility in the evolving business landscape.
Choosing the right key performance indicators (KPIs), according to the State of Strategy Management Practice Global 2023 Report, ranks as the second most significant obstacle in strategy planning.
How Data-Ink Ratio Imposed Minimalism on Data Visualization
Data-ink ratio seeks to maximize the proportion of informative elements in a chart, with a ratio of 1 being the ultimate goal. It only includes data-representing elements, free of decorations or redundancies.
Rethinking Business Ecosystems Part 1: What Systemic Issues Are Undermining Your Holistic Growth?
Leaders must foster innovation within the business ecosystem due to the unpredictable global market and growing societal expectations—allowing them to identify gaps and develop relevant solutions.
The State of Sustainability Reporting: Key Insights for Businesses
The sustainability report, as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) CEO Eelco van der Enden puts it, “is the end of a long journey of transactions and actions that define the company’s approach to sustainability.”
Do ESG Strategies and Performance Measurement Truly Matter to Sectoral Investors?
As environmental awareness grows, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies are gaining more importance in the investment community. Thus, industry-specific KPIs become all the more crucial to implement effective sustainability measures.
How Strategy Management in MENA Is Shaping Up: Key Insights from TKI’s 2024 Report
Organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are adapting their strategic approaches to navigate current challenges and capitalize on emerging opportunities.
Charting a Course: A Step-by-Step Guide to Deliberate Strategic Planning
Deliberate strategic planning is a methodical approach where organizations set clear objectives and craft strategies to achieve them. It thrives in a stable environment, ensuring alignment between goals and actions.
In today’s fast-paced business environment, mastering strategy management is more critical than ever. It allows you to define your competitive edge, implement proper resource allocation, risk management, and performance measurement, and most importantly, drive innovation while building resilience for long-term success.
Committed to empowering organizations in that pursuit, The KPI Institute launched the State of Strategy Management Practice Report in 2022. The State of Strategy Management Practices Report is a detailed examination of current trends, challenges, and innovations within the realm of strategy management. This report synthesizes data from a wide range of sources, including surveys of industry leaders, interviews with experts, and an analysis of real-world case studies.
The report consists of three main sections: Strategy Planning, Strategy Measurement, and Strategy Execution. Each of these sections includes several areas of interest such as general practices, strategy review, key performance indicators (KPI) deployment practices, strategy execution challenges, and project management practices. It also offers recommendations for best practices to enhance strategy management and equip organizations to better navigate emerging trends and disruptions.
The State of Strategy Management Practice Report is an annual publication, and the continuity allows organizations to stay adaptable in a changing business environment. With this ongoing commitment, organizations are able to grasp the broader perspective and identify patterns and shifts, allowing them to adjust strategies and make continuous improvements.
In the State of Strategy Management Practice – 2023 Middle East Report, results in the Strategy Planning section show that most surveyed professionals see strategy formulation as consistent and structured, with 47% using specialized methodologies. In contrast, 38% reported no specific methodology, indicating a more flexible approach. It is also important to note that 15% acknowledged an informal process. Although an informal process may offer flexibility, it’s important to consider the potential drawbacks and challenges that arise from having a strategy without a strict framework.
Furthermore, in the Strategy Measurement section, 22% of respondents reported that their organizations lack a formal performance management system (PMS). The absence of a PMS creates several challenges, obstructing strategy execution and limiting the organization’s ability to adapt to change and capitalize on opportunities. This is further reflected in the Strategy Execution section, where professionals were asked about their organizations’ success in executing strategy; 57% acknowledged being aware of cases where the strategy had failed.
Given these red flags, it is crucial to recognize that strategy management practices must evolve to meet organizational needs and adapt to the external environment. To determine whether the figures above have improved and if organizations have enhanced their strategy management, The KPI Institute conducted another research this year, diving more into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The findings will be presented in the third edition of the State of Strategy Management Practices Report.
The State of Strategy Management Practices Report – 2024 MENA Region will be available soon. This report presents statistics from over 100 organizations and features insights from leaders of top companies. This edition has been more refined as it offers advice from The KPI Institute’s own experts on developing more effective organizational systems for strategy planning and execution.
Stay tuned for the official release date and details on obtaining your copy. For updates and exclusive content, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn.
We are thrilled to announce the refresh of the Global Performance Audit Unit (GPAU) platform! Our team has been hard at work, and we’re excited to unveil the following updates:
Improved Browsing Experience: The refreshed visuals reflect our commitment to innovation. You’ll notice a cleaner, more modern look across the platform.
New Case Studies: Whether you prefer a detailed reading of our clients success stories or just the highlights of the awarding ceremonies, all are available on our homepage (www.gpaunit.org) through brochures and video materials.
Enabling Tools: Discover our assessment services and understand how it can take your business to the next level. Try the FREE self-assessments to gauge your current maturity level and apply for theorganizational Performance Excellence Recognition!
Celebrating Excellence: PIF Receives Prestigious Award
GPA Unit is proud to announce that the Public Investment Fund (PIF) has successfully achieved the highest Maturity Level: 5: Optimized. This follows a comprehensive assessment of PIF’s strategy and performance management system on 3 key areas: Strategic Planning, Performance Measurement and Performance Improvement.
Congratulations to the entire PIF team for their dedication and exemplary performance!
Thank You for Being a Part of Our Community!
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“What constitutes a good KPI example?”, “How should KPIs be measured?”, “Which KPI is suitable for our organization?”, and “How well will employees understand and participate in tracking these KPIs?” These questions often loom large for companies seeking to select the right KPIs to accurately measure their performance and progress toward strategic objectives.
According to The KPI Institute’s (TKI) State of Strategy Management Practice Global Report – 2023, choosing the right KPIs ranks as the second most significant obstacle in strategy planning.
The report further reveals a concerning trend regarding the challenges associated with working with KPIs. Results indicate a surge in the hurdles associated with KPI selection compared to the previous year.
Several factors contribute to the challenging nature of KPI selection, including the need to align with strategic objectives; the common practice of defining initiatives before KPIs rather than defining KPIs and targets first and then developing initiatives to reach them; clearly differentiating between strategic and operational KPIs at the departmental level; and focusing too much on task-related KPIs rather than impact KPIs at the employee level.
3 stages of KPI selection
Selecting the right KPIs requires careful planning, analysis, and collaboration across various organizational areas. A rigorous KPI selection process typically involves three major stages (see Figure 1).
Your initial step in the process is to set a clear direction for KPI selection by recognizing the business objectives and goals that must be attained. This is essential to ensure that all personnel are working towards the same objectives and that progress can be efficiently monitored. This stage clarifies the necessity and application of measurement while precisely defining the intended purpose of the KPIs.
Next, conduct thorough research to gather a range of KPI examples. This serves a dual purpose: educating your internal stakeholders and fostering meaningful discussions about KPIs. This process, labelled as the KPI expo, entails compiling a comprehensive list of KPIs that will later be filtered based on a set of criteria.
You should review both internal and external data sources (see Figure 2) to leverage existing practices while also gaining insights into industry best practices. The KPI expo can include existing KPI lists from various organizational levels, which may already be in use or have been tested within your organization.
In the next stage, use intelligence gathering and conduct workshops to identify suitable KPIs. You can obtain insights from a diverse range of stakeholders, including clients, suppliers, employees, and management. This approach will foster broader buy-in and support.
TKI recommends the following selection methods to ensure the identification of relevant KPIs:
Question framing: Guide discussions toward relevant contexts and gather participant perspectives. Questions might include, “How many KPIs should we select?” or “What is the procedure for validating the selected KPIs?”
Value flow analysis: Examine the flow of value within business processes—from inputs to outcomes—to understand how objectives can be measured from different perspectives.
KPI balancing: Avoid narrow perspectives by selecting at least two complementary KPIs per objective, ensuring the measurement of both quantity and quality, subjectivity and objectivity, and efficiency and effectiveness.
Additionally, among the existing criteria in practice, TKI suggests using these five to ensure KPI relevancy:
Measurable: Can the KPI result be quantified?
Accessible: Can your organization feasibly gather the necessary data?
Specific: Does the KPI address a specific issue you have?
Actionable: Does it provide information for decision-making?
Balanced: Does it reflect various facets of performance?
The final stage in the KPI selection process involves monitoring the selected KPIs for necessary recalibrations. This can be achieved through two key activities: KPIs documentation and the performance review meeting.
KPI documentation can reveal limitations associated with data collection or reporting and gaps in the cost-benefit analysis of the KPI’s usage. Develop a comprehensive set of information for each selected KPI to facilitate data collection, reporting, and analysis.
Use a standard template, known as a KPI documentation form (see Figure 3), capturing each KPI’s details, definition, calculation formula, target, data source, reporting frequency, KPI owner, and data custodian. For more examples, you can explore TKI’s comprehensive repository of KPIs at smartKPIs.com.
The first reporting and performance review meeting for the new KPIs will reveal their utility for decision-making. It provides managers with an overview of how the KPIs cover all aspects of the business and helps identify necessary adjustments to the corporate scorecard, ensuring that the most relevant data is available for decision-making. Facilitate this first meeting through your strategy office.
After this final stage, your KPIs can be maintained as initially selected, recalibrated and updated, or even phased out of use based on their effectiveness and relevance to your organizational goals.
By following these stages, you can select and implement KPIs that accurately measure performance and support strategic objectives, ultimately driving your business success and growth.
Ready to take your KPI selection to the next level? Head over to the KPI section on our website for more in-depth articles and expert advice.
Do ESG Strategies and Performance Measurement Truly Matter to Sectoral Investors?
