If your KPIs or performance measures aren’t pushing you outside your comfort zone, then they’re wasting everyone’s time. If you only measure what you already know you can achieve, those measures or KPIs probably won’t take you any further. They’re just confirming that things are as you expect. They’re not pushing you to try harder, think smarter or reach higher.

People often asked me: Bernard, does measuring performance really help us improve? Can KPIs and metrics make a tangible difference in our businesses? And my answer is always a big and resounding YES!

Good news for all business managers that would love to have their business metrics — for which the data reside in databases behind the firewall (on-premise) — available on their smart-phone. We have made the integration of on-premise data into KPI Dashboard much easier with our Data Collector.

In many ways I believe the essence of strategy lies in the choice of a singular value proposition, or determining how you will balance your resources across the spectrum of choices. What is a value proposition? It’s the determination made by any organization of how they propose to create or add value for their customers. It helps answer the question: “Why would people buy from or work with us?” Traditionally, three choices have been available: Low Cost (through operational excellence), Product Leadership (supplying the best product or service through innovation and technological superiority), and Customer Intimacy (best value derived from outstanding service and relationship building).

I snapped this picture at a cross walk in Manhattan near Central Park over the weekend. What does it say? Stop or walk? You could walk and not, technically, be jaywalking.  You stand a good chance of getting smacked by a car though if you do. You’d be technically right. And maybe even dead right.

I’m going to share with you my secret formula for the right number of KPIs or performance measures that you truly need, so you can stop drowning in overwhelm…

One of the problems with analytics and business intelligence (BI) information is that these techniques do not always complete the task of solving a problem or moving to the next step of creating and realizing value. I refer to this as the syndrome of “What? So what? Then what?” My concern is that many organizations use analytics and BI to answer only the first question, but then they are stymied when it comes to answering the next two questions.

KPI Dashboard offers click-and-go integrations. Just provide KPI Dashboard with credentials to access the selected application / tool, and it will automatically collect trending data for (key) performance indicators, and update it every day, no configuration required.

The standard measure of wealth is GDP per capita. The chart below shows that Americans have been getting continually wealthier for decades, with a few blips here and there (source of data). The measure of wealth—Gross Domestic Product, is based on the dollar value of economic transactions.

Squirrel moments happen all around us, and with greater frequency than we’d care to admit. As flawed human beings, it’s easy for us to get sidetracked from what we should be doing, by some urgent new distraction that seems terribly critical in the moment. Yet most of us eventually manage to refocus, once we become aware (through our own cognitive skills or because a friend or colleague points it out to us) of how badly the squirrel moment has driven us off-course. Typically it is the speed with which we are able to re-calibrate ourselves that ultimately determines the degree of damage, if any, that is caused by the distraction.