KPIs - any idea?
William Hewlett is quoted as saying: "You only can manage what you measure, and what you measure gets done!" Pharma management is frequently quoted as saying: "If you want x calls a day, you will get x calls a day."
By on Sep 7, 2009William Hewlett is quoted as saying: "You only can manage what you measure, and what you measure gets done!" Pharma management is frequently quoted as saying: "If you want x calls a day, you will get x calls a day."
Assumption: Performance is measured without ever having defined what performance is.
Suggestion: Why not send an e-mail to 5 colleagues now and ask for a (one sentence!) definition of performance, then collect the answers and ...
There are two questions in that acronym KPI: "What is performance?" and "Which are its key indicators?"
Looking up on Wikipedia, the first indication you get about performance is "performance arts". Digging deeper and getting into "performance management", you will find that "Performance [is], the activity of a unit (be it individual, team, department, or division) of an organization intended to accomplish some desired result." This means that performance is meant to stand for "activities" whereas only a few lines later it appears that performance is synonymous to results: "A performance problem is any gap between Desired Results and Actual Results".
What is performance, what do we measure, why and what stands behind our KPIs?
What we find in pharma KPIs, especially in marketing & sales organisations, tends to have only one intersection with the above: it is mainly about measuring activity. Measuring the number of calls or details, days in field, or quality of details, or hours spent in the office (measured by the "famous" punch clock.) This is measuring input and not output or results.
Another question immediately arises: Do our people understand what we want from them if we use "management by objectives" and still measure activities instead of achieved objectives? One might suspect that we are using so called KPIs only because it is easy. Collecting a number of input parameters, easy to measure, easy to compare assumedly is telling little. I believe we are using our so-called KPIs only as fig leaves, assuming they have something to do with performance = results.
Is there a clear and undisputable correlation between exceeded KPIs and delivered results in your organisation? Are the so-called top performers really delivering the highest number of calls or are we using the wrong word or acronym?
Let us replace "performance" with "results", making ourselves much better understood.
Assumedly measuring results would allow leadership instead of management and open an easy way both to delegation and taking over of responsibility.
By the way: (assigning and) taking more responsibility is one of the major reasons for an employee to stay in his company.
Replacing the old hat "KPI" with result would better acknowledge and respect the fast changing circumstances in the so-called pharma markets.
Let us know what you think about your KPIs and especially about their validity for your company's success.