People take satisfaction from adding KPIs. My job is to cut the list back to the few you must steer by.
Charts of accounts grow by creep: every line answered a past question, and none is ever removed. Collapsing the reporting to the strategic levers turns the same data into an operating tool. Taken upstream, it also removes the drag for everyone coding invoices.
A conference company’s P&L had crept past 260 lines, with more cost centres than employees. Collapsed to roughly 15 lines around the real levers, it surfaced the trade-off between exhibition halls and conference centres, and every venue decision thereafter started from a full build-out costing.
The full story →Trailing indicators reduce reporting to commentary. Forward indicators, even unaudited ones, turn reactive decisions into proactive ones.
Industry-standard licensing reports Q1 only in month five. Provisional monthly forecasts from the licensees covering 80% of revenue closed the gap: conversations about underperformance could happen in time to influence the quarter, not after it.
The full story →A genuine KPI framework is a small set of metrics matching leadership’s agenda. Selecting them is a strategic decision, and the framework gives every trade-off a tiebreaker.
A monthly KPI book issued 32 KPIs per trader, with leadership openly acknowledging nobody could hit them all, so each manager chose which to miss. Rationalised to a focused set, the framework clarified what the team was optimising for; the 32-KPI report survived as a diagnostic, not the instrument of management.
The full story →The three-horizon plan only works if horizons two and three are tracked with the same discipline as this year’s delivery: preparation milestones for the research-now execute-later items, and line-of-sight for the long incubation priorities. I build that tracking into the KPI rhythm, so the plan and the budget can coexist without merging. Each keeps a distinct role.
At an apparel retailer, US expansion sat in the third horizon, which can get the least attention because it seems the least pressing. The preparation milestones were identified and tracked alongside this year’s delivery. A five-store pilot opened, run for proof and not for profit. The next owner was handed a proven concept rather than an assertion.
The method in full, in the investment lifecycle article: Enabling Infrastructure.
Reporting is quick to fix but never fixes itself.
I don’t need any detail. I will set up a short call. No charge, no deck, and no follow-up unless you ask for it.