KPIs are a vital part of any Performance Management or Strategy Execution system. Yet how many times have you struggled to understand or to explain what is meant by “KPI”? On the surface, it seems simple enough – Key Performance Indicator.
British Petroleum (BP) is one of the world’s leading oil and gas companies operating in over 80 countries. Meeting the growing demand for energy in a responsible manner represents BP’s strategy to create value for its shareholders.
We’ll start off today’s article with a quote from a well-known author, H. James Harrington, who once mentioned that:
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
Therefore, measurement is the first step towards improvement, in all the dimensions of an entity: from time to processes and from inputs to outputs.
Reporting is an important stage in the performance management process, although managers can sometimes fall into the trap of considering it as the end of the performance cycle. However, just reporting performance data will not ensure the improvement of results. Improvement is only possible when decisions are made based on the insights provided by data.