Stacey Barr outlines four essential types of measures to gauge progress: Performance measures or KPIs, Activity, Quota and Status measures. But what is the significance of these four types of progress measures in managing the complexity of using measures to build accountability and cultivate a learning culture, which are crucial elements for fostering and sustaining a high-performance culture?

Here is how you can use these four types of progress measures to foster and sustain a high-performance culture:

1. Performance Measures (KPIs): These metrics serve as the compass, offering insights into the efficacy of existing systems and processes. By leveraging performance measures, teams can identify areas of success and areas requiring improvement, thus facilitating continuous learning and enhancing organisational capabilities.
2. Activity Measures: These metrics are instrumental in monitoring the consistency of behaviours and habits within the team. For instance, they can be deployed to assess the performance of the shop floor. By tracking activity measures, teams can ensure adherence to desired behaviours and practices, fostering a culture of consistency and reliability.
3. Quota Measures: These measures function as the yardstick for monitoring task progress. They play a vital role in instilling a sense of discipline within the team. Utilising quota measures enables organisations to reinforce the importance of getting things done promptly. These measures can be used to evaluate an individual’s performance.
4. Status Measures: These metrics offer a snapshot of cumulative progress towards predefined scores or totals. They are particularly useful for holding leaders accountable for fostering high-performance habits and ensuring the diligent execution of tasks. By leveraging status measures, organisations can track overall progress and maintain momentum towards achieving strategic goals.

Activity, Quota, and Status measures are measures that are highly influenced by individuals and can, therefore, be used to hold people accountable. Performance measures, which are used to monitor progress towards strategy, should only be used to improve organisational performance.

When these four types of measures are properly used, then the tension created by using measures to hold people accountable and to cultivate learning is significantly reduced.

The challenge, however, is in developing meaningful performance measures, especially for qualitative goals or outcomes. The PuMP^® performance measure approach is the process that can help you develop and implement performance measures that are true evidence of your goals or outcomes.

Book yourself a seat at our upcoming PuMP^® Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop to learn more about developing and implementing meaningful measures.