Key Performance Indicators Quotes

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Key Performance Indicators should be customized to each business.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
You can't effectively run a company without having clarity on it's key performance indicators.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
In business, sometimes you just have to let the results speak for themselves.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
As new Indusries emerge, new kinds of key performance indicators also emerge.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Companies should monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) because they provide critical insights into the health and success of the business. Regular KPI tracking helps companies make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and stay aligned with their strategic goals, ultimately contributing to sustained growth and profitability.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When you're running a public company, you're held accountable to a multitude of stakeholders all of whom require explanation for your performance.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
As new industries emerge, new kinds of key performance indicators also emerge.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Generally, hypothesis statements use the format: We believe [this statement is true]. We will know we’re [right/wrong] when we see the following feedback from the market: [qualitative feedback] and/or [quantitative feedback] and/or [key performance indicator change].
Jeff Gothelf (Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience)
1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.
Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business)
Eliciting peak performance means going up against something or somebody. Let me give you a simple example. For years the performance of the Intel facilities maintenance group, which is responsible for keeping our buildings clean and neat, was mediocre, and no amount of pressure or inducement seemed to do any good. We then initiated a program in which each building’s upkeep was periodically scored by a resident senior manager, dubbed a “building czar.” The score was then compared with those given the other buildings. The condition of all of them dramatically improved almost immediately. Nothing else was done; people did not get more money or other rewards. What they did get was a racetrack, an arena of competition. If your work is facilities maintenance, having your building receive the top score is a powerful source of motivation. This is key to the manager’s approach and involvement: he has to see the work as it is seen by the people who do that work every day and then create indicators so that his subordinates can watch their “racetrack” take shape.
Andrew S. Grove (High Output Management)
Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
write animal stories. This one was called Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly; a meditation on ethics, you might say; it had been inspired by a short business trip to Brittany. Here’s a key passage from it: ‘Let us first consider the Breton cow: all year round she thinks of nothing but grazing, her glossy muzzle ascends and descends with impressive regularity, and no shudder of anguish comes to trouble the wistful gaze of her light-brown eyes. All that is as it ought to be, and even appears to indicate a profound existential oneness, a decidedly enviable identity between her being-in-the-world and her being-in-itself. Alas, in this instance the philosopher is found wanting, and his conclusions, while based on a correct and profound intuition, will be rendered invalid if he has not previously taken the trouble of gathering documentary evidence from the naturalist. In fact the Breton cow’s nature is duplicitous. At certain times of the year (precisely determined by the inexorable functioning of genetic programming) an astonishing revolution takes place in her being. Her mooing becomes more strident, prolonged, its very harmonic texture modified to the point of recalling at times, and astonishingly so, certain groans which escape the sons of men. Her movements become more rapid, more nervous, from time to time she breaks into a trot. It is not simply her muzzle, though it seems, in its glossy regularity, conceived for reflecting the abiding presence of a mineral passivity, which contracts and twitches under the painful effect of an assuredly powerful desire. ‘The key to the riddle is extremely simple, and it is that what the Breton cow desires (thus demonstrating, and she must be given credit here, her life’s one desire) is, as the breeders say in their cynical parlance, “to get stuffed”. And stuff her they do, more or less directly; the artificial insemination syringe can in effect, whatever the cost in certain emotional complications, take the place of the bull’s penis in performing this function. In both cases the cow calms down and returns to her original state of earnest meditation, except that a few months later she will give birth to an adorable little calf. Which, let it be said in passing, means profit for the breeder.’ * The breeder, of course, symbolized God. Moved by an irrational sympathy for the filly, he promised her, starting from the next chapter, the everlasting delight of numerous stallions, while the cow, guilty of the sin of pride, was to be gradually condemned to the dismal pleasures of artificial fertilization. The pathetic mooing of the ruminant would prove incapable of swaying the judgment of the Great Architect. A delegation of sheep, formed in solidarity, had no better luck. The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God.
Michel Houellebecq (Whatever)
Several teams of German psychologists that have studied the RAT in recent years have come up with remarkable discoveries about cognitive ease. One of the teams raised two questions: Can people feel that a triad of words has a solution before they know what the solution is? How does mood influence performance in this task? To find out, they first made some of their subjects happy and others sad, by asking them to think for several minutes about happy or sad episodes in their lives. Then they presented these subjects with a series of triads, half of them linked (such as dive, light, rocket) and half unlinked (such as dream, ball, book), and instructed them to press one of two keys very quickly to indicate their guess about whether the triad was linked. The time allowed for this guess, 2 seconds, was much too short for the actual solution to come to anyone’s mind. The first surprise is that people’s guesses are much more accurate than they would be by chance. I find this astonishing. A sense of cognitive ease is apparently generated by a very faint signal from the associative machine, which “knows” that the three words are coherent (share an association) long before the association is retrieved. The role of cognitive ease in the judgment was confirmed experimentally by another German team: manipulations that increase cognitive ease (priming, a clear font, pre-exposing words) all increase the tendency to see the words as linked. Another remarkable discovery is the powerful effect of mood on this intuitive performance. The experimenters computed an “intuition index” to measure accuracy. They found that putting the participants in a good mood before the test by having them think happy thoughts more than doubled accuracy. An even more striking result is that unhappy subjects were completely incapable of performing the intuitive task accurately; their guesses were no better than random. Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. Here again, as in the mere exposure effect, the connection makes biological sense. A good mood is a signal that things are generally going well, the environment is safe, and it is all right to let one’s guard down. A bad mood indicates that things are not going very well, there may be a threat, and vigilance is required. Cognitive ease is both a cause and a consequence of a pleasant feeling.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
KRAs and KPIs KRA and KPI are two confusing acronyms for an approach commonly recommended for identifying a person’s major job responsibilities. KRA stands for key result areas; KPI stands for key performance indicators. As academics and consultants explain this jargon, key result areas are the primary components or parts of the job in which a person is expected to deliver results. Key performance indicators represent the measures that will be used to determine how well the individual has performed. In other words, KRAs tell where the individual is supposed to concentrate her attention; KPIs tell how her performance in the specified areas should be measured. Probably few parts of the performance appraisal process create more misunderstanding and bewilderment than do the notion of KRAs and KPIs. The reason is that so much of the material written about KPIs and KRAs is both
Dick Grote (How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals: Simple, Effective, Done Right)
1. Key result indicators (KRIs) tell you how you have done in a perspective or critical success factor. 2. Result indicators (RIs) tell you what you have done. 3. Performance indicators (PIs) tell you what to do. 4. KPIs tell you what to do to increase performance dramatically. EXHIBIT 1.1 Four Types of Performance Measures
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
The PIs help teams to align themselves with their organization’s strategy. PIs are nonfinancial and complement the KPIs; they are shown with KPIs on the scorecard for each organization, division, department, and team. Performance indicators that lie beneath KRIs could include: Percentage increase in sales with top 10% of customers Number of employees’ suggestions implemented in last 30 days Customer complaints from key customers Sales calls organized for the next week, two weeks Late deliveries to key customers The RIs summarize activity, and all financial performance measures are RIs (e.g., daily or weekly sales analysis is a very useful summary, but it is a result of the efforts of many teams). To fully understand what to increase or
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Outcomes. We start with the functions and processes driving the business, then push for the company to set goals, delineate measurable Brand Promises, and pick Critical Numbers on the One-Page Strategic Plan, including KPIs for both the People and Process sides of the business so the leadership team has a balanced view of performance.
Verne Harnish (Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0))
Guideline #4: Résumés without achievements are like report cards without grades. Hiring authorities and prospective employers know that a key indicator of future performance is past performance. It’s not what you did in the past that determines your “hireability”; it’s the results and achievements you produced that matters most. Your résumé is not the place to be humble! It’s the place to professionally and confidently show off your past achievements and blow your own horn—loud and clear!
Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)
T-TESTS FOR INDEPENDENT SAMPLES T-tests are used to test whether the means of a continuous variable differ across two different groups. For example, do men and women differ in their levels of income, when measured as a continuous variable? Does crime vary between two parts of town? Do rich people live longer than poor people? Do high-performing students commit fewer acts of violence than do low-performing students? The t-test approach is shown graphically in Figure 12.1, which illustrates the incomes of men and women as boxplots (the lines in the middle of the boxes indicate the means rather than the medians).2 When the two groups are independent samples, the t-test is called the independent-samples t-test. Sometimes the continuous variable is called a “test variable” and the dichotomous variable is called a “grouping variable.” The t-test tests whether the difference of the means is significantly different from zero, that is, whether men and women have different incomes. The following hypotheses are posited: Key Point The independent-samples t-test is used when one variable is dichotomous and the other is continuous. H0: Men and women do not have different mean incomes (in the population). HA: Men and women do have different mean incomes (in the population). Alternatively, using the Greek letter m to refer to differences in the population, H0: μm = μf, and HA: μm ≠ μf. The formula for calculating the t-test test statistic (a tongue twister?) is As always, the computer calculates the test statistic and reports at what level it is significant. Such calculations are seldom done by hand. To further conceptual understanding of this formula, it is useful to relate it to the discussion of hypothesis testing in Chapter 10. First, note that the difference of means, appears in the numerator: the larger the difference of means, the larger the t-test test statistic, and the more likely we might reject the null hypothesis. Second, sp is the pooled variance of the two groups, that is, the weighted average of the variances of each group.3 Increases in the standard deviation decrease the test statistic. Thus, it is easier to reject the null hypotheses when two populations are clustered narrowly around their means than when they are spread widely around them. Finally, more observations (that is, increased information or larger n1 and n2) increase the size of the test statistic, making it easier to reject the null hypothesis. Figure 12.1 The T-Test: Mean Incomes by Gender
Evan M. Berman (Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts)
Things may even be worse than that, however. There’s some reason to think that the rise in ethical consumerism could even be harmful for the world, on balance. Psychologists have discovered a phenomenon that they call moral licensing, which describes how people who perform one good action often compensate by doing fewer good actions in the future. For example, in a recent experiment, participants were told to choose a product from either a selection of mostly “green” items (like an energy-efficient lightbulb) or from a selection of mostly conventional items (like a regular lightbulb). They were then told to perform a supposedly unrelated visual perception task: a square box with a diagonal line across it was displayed on a computer screen, and a pattern of twenty dots would flash up on the screen; the subjects had to press a key to indicate whether there were more dots on the left or right side of the line. It was always obvious which was the correct answer, and the experimenters emphasized the importance of being as accurate as possible, telling the subjects that the results of the test would be used in designing future experiments. However, the subjects were told that, whether or not their answers were correct, they’d be paid five cents every time they indicated there were more dots on the left-hand side of the line and five cents every time they indicated there were more dots on the right-hand side. They therefore had a financial incentive to lie, and they were alone, so they knew they wouldn’t be caught if they did so. Moreover, they were invited to pay themselves out of an envelope, so they had an opportunity to steal as well. What happened? People who had previously purchased a “green” product were significantly more likely to both lie and steal than those who had purchased the conventional product. Their
William MacAskill (Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference)
Cash is the oxygen that fuels growth. And the cash conversion cycle (CCC) is a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures how long it takes for a dollar spent on anything (rent, utilities, marketing, payroll, etc.) to make its way through your business and back into your pocket. In
Verne Harnish (Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0))
Mohammed bin Salman developed a fascination with consultants when he was setting up his own companies and his MiSK foundation before his father became king. One idea he loved was the creation of key performance indicators, soon to be known throughout the ministries and government-linked companies as “KPIs.” Mohammed didn’t respond to strategies that weren’t backed up by numbers. He had an impressive memory for them as well, often recounting to underlings forecasts they had showed him months beforehand to prove he had a strong understanding of the underlying issues.
Bradley Hope (Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book')
Joy and peace are the key performance indicators of love. These two attributes of the Holy Spirit are used to judge the quality of life
Khuliso Mamathoni (The Greatest Proposal)
The third issue is that companies usually base performance reviews on annual goals. But employees and their managers don’t set annual goals or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) at Netflix.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
Near the end of his tenure as co-CEO of SAP, Jim Hagemann Snabe discovered that the German software giant had amassed more than fifty thousand key performance indicators (KPIs), covering every job across the company. Snabe was horrified. “We were trying to run the company by remote control,” he recalls. “We had all this amazing talent, but had asked them to put their brains on ice.
Gary Hamel (Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them)
The only people in any enterprise who ever describe anyone except the people who buy the enterprise’s products and services as “customers” are IT personnel. The only people in the enterprise who ever talk about “aligning with the business” are IT personnel. (Maybe the head of sales has talked about aligning her function with a new strategy or a new value proposition, or the head of manufacturing has talked about aligning with new key performance indicators—but aligning with the business?) That view can’t be good for IT. It is a legacy of the
Richard Hunter (Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value)
Value Stream Management Do policies need to be changed to enable improved performance? Are there organization departmental reporting structures that can be changed to reduce conflicting goals or align resources? Do existing performance metrics (if any) encourage desired behaviors and discourage dysfunctional behavior? What key performance indicators (KPIs) will we use to monitor value stream performance? Who will monitor the KPIs? How frequently? Who else will results be communicated to? What visual systems can be created to aid in managing and monitoring the value stream? Are the key processes within the value stream clearly defined with their own KPIs, standardized appropriately, and measured and improved regularly?
Karen Martin (Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation)
If you are able to keep an open dialogue over what key performance indicators your boss would like to see for them to consider a pay rise for you, you may actually walk away from that meeting with a clearer view of what you need to do to be able to get that pay rise in the future.
Andrew Baxter
New CFO Whenever a new CFO joins a company, one critical step is evaluating the current reporting system. The reports should be able to inform you if you are meeting your targets or not. The reports should have a list of key performance indicators (KPI) that are being tracked. It is important to ensure that the KPIs are fully inclusive, in other words, there are no KPIs that are missing. The KPIs that do exist should be relevant and should be comprehensive. It is often the case that certain KPIs are missing and could sum up the situation better than other existing KPIs do. Hence, a review of KPIs are necessary from time to time. This review may not be required every quarter but there should be a review each year, at a minimum.
Mark Gruner (The Definitive Chief Financial Officer: How They can Transform your Business)
Once you've successfully realized the iterated future state, you must have two things firmly in place to sustain it: (1) someone formally designated to monitor value stream performance to assess how it's performing, facilitate problem solving when issues arise, and lead ongoing improvement to raise the performance bar, and (2) key performance indicators to tell whether performance is on track or not (value stream management)
Karen Martin (Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation)
We’ve looked at over a dozen policies and processes that most companies have but that we don’t have at Netflix. These include: Vacation Policies Decision-Making Approvals Expense Policies Performance Improvement Plans Approval Processes Raise Pools Key Performance Indicators Management by Objective Travel Policies Decision Making by Committee Contract Sign-Offs Salary Bands Pay Grades Pay-Per-Performance Bonuses These are all ways of controlling people rather than inspiring them. It’s not easy to avoid chaos and anarchy as you remove these controls, but if you develop every employee’s sense of self-discipline and responsibility, help them develop enough knowledge to make good decisions, and develop a feedback culture to stimulate learning, you’ll be amazed at how effective your organization can be.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
We’ve been against performance reviews from the beginning. The first problem is that the feedback goes only one way—downward. The second difficulty is that with a performance review you get feedback from only one person—your boss. This is in direct opposition to our “don’t seek to please your boss” vibe. I want people to receive feedback not just from their direct managers but from anyone who has feedback to provide. The third issue is that companies usually base performance reviews on annual goals. But employees and their managers don’t set annual goals or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) at Netflix. Likewise, many companies use performance reviews to determine pay raises, but at Netflix we base salaries on the market, not performance.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
We hate the anxiety of uncertainty. Pretending is the price we pay to remove it. So we comfort ourselves with orderly org charts, working backward from a preset destination, factoring out what we can’t measure, tasking team members using “key performance indicators”—monitoring it all with “dashboards,” turning and tuning the dials as if running a machine. It is our way of self-soothing by exerting control and power over whatever and whomever we can.
Matthew Barzun (The Power of Giving Away Power: How the Best Leaders Learn to Let Go)
We’ve looked at over a dozen policies and processes that most companies have but that we don’t have at Netflix. These include: Vacation Policies Decision-Making Approvals Expense Policies Performance Improvement Plans Approval Processes Raise Pools Key Performance Indicators Management by Objective Travel Policies Decision Making by Committee Contract Sign-Offs Salary Bands Pay Grades Pay-Per-Performance Bonuses These are all ways of controlling people rather than inspiring them.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
You as the leader should have a Function Accountability Chart (FAC) to help CEOs and managers to see clearly the person who is accountable for each role and key positions. It should also show the metrics or key performance indicators assigned for each of the main functions of the business. Each item on the Profit & Loss, and Balance Sheet should be assigned to specific people who are accountable for these roles. Each team should know their responsibilities, accountabilities and who they are answerable
Emily Goldstein (Scaling Up: The Secrets You Should Know to Make Your Business Grow Exponentially)
knowledge of cardiovascular disease and whether such knowledge reduces behaviors that put people at risk for cardiovascular disease. Simple regression is used to analyze the relationship between two continuous variables. Continuous variables assume that the distances between ordered categories are determinable.1 In simple regression, one variable is defined as the dependent variable and the other as the independent variable (see Chapter 2 for the definitions). In the current example, the level of knowledge obtained from workshops and other sources might be measured on a continuous scale and treated as an independent variable, and behaviors that put people at risk for cardiovascular disease might also be measured on a continuous scale and treated as a dependent variable. Scatterplot The relationship between two continuous variables can be portrayed in a scatterplot. A scatterplot is merely a plot of the data points for two continuous variables, as shown in Figure 14.1 (without the straight line). By convention, the dependent variable is shown on the vertical (or Y-) axis, and the independent variable on the horizontal (or X-) axis. The relationship between the two variables is estimated as a straight line relationship. The line is defined by the equation y = a + bx, where a is the intercept (or constant), and b is the slope. The slope, b, is defined as Figure 14.1 Scatterplot or (y2 – y1)/(x2 – x1). The line is calculated mathematically such that the sum of distances from each observation to the line is minimized.2 By definition, the slope indicates the change in y as a result of a unit change in x. The straight line, defined by y = a + bx, is also called the regression line, and the slope (b) is called the regression coefficient. A positive regression coefficient indicates a positive relationship between the variables, shown by the upward slope in Figure 14.1. A negative regression coefficient indicates a negative relationship between the variables and is indicated by a downward-sloping line. Test of Significance The test of significance of the regression coefficient is a key test that tells us whether the slope (b) is statistically different from zero. The slope is calculated from a sample, and we wish to know whether it is significant. When the regression line is horizontal (b = 0), no relationship exists between the two variables. Then, changes in the independent variable have no effect on the dependent variable. The following hypotheses are thus stated: H0: b = 0, or the two variables are unrelated. HA: b ≠ 0, or the two variables are (positively or negatively) related. To determine whether the slope equals zero, a t-test is performed. The test statistic is defined as the slope, b, divided by the standard error of the slope, se(b). The standard error of the slope is a measure of the distribution of the observations around the regression slope, which is based on the standard deviation of those observations to the regression line: Thus, a regression line with a small slope is more likely to be statistically significant when observations lie closely around it (that is, the standard error of the observations around the line is also small, resulting in a larger test statistic). By contrast, the same regression line might be statistically insignificant when observations are scattered widely around it. Observations that lie farther from the
Evan M. Berman (Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts)
regression line will have larger standard deviations and, hence, larger standard errors. The computer calculates the slope, intercept, standard error of the slope, and the level at which the slope is statistically significant. Key Point The significance of the slope tests the relationship. Consider the following example. A management analyst with the Department of Defense wishes to evaluate the impact of teamwork on the productivity of naval shipyard repair facilities. Although all shipyards are required to use teamwork management strategies, these strategies are assumed to vary in practice. Coincidentally, a recently implemented employee survey asked about the perceived use and effectiveness of teamwork. These items have been aggregated into a single index variable that measures teamwork. Employees were also asked questions about perceived performance, as measured by productivity, customer orientation, planning and scheduling, and employee motivation. These items were combined into an index measure of work productivity. Both index measures are continuous variables. The analyst wants to know whether a relationship exists between perceived productivity and teamwork. Table 14.1 shows the computer output obtained from a simple regression. The slope, b, is 0.223; the slope coefficient of teamwork is positive; and the slope is significant at the 1 percent level. Thus, perceptions of teamwork are positively associated with productivity. The t-test statistic, 5.053, is calculated as 0.223/0.044 (rounding errors explain the difference from the printed value of t). Other statistics shown in Table 14.1 are discussed below. The appropriate notation for this relationship is shown below. Either the t-test statistic or the standard error should be shown in parentheses, directly below the regression coefficient; analysts should state which statistic is shown. Here, we show the t-test statistic:3 The level of significance of the regression coefficient is indicated with asterisks, which conforms to the p-value legend that should also be shown. Typically, two asterisks are used to indicate a 1 percent level of significance, one asterisk for a 5 percent level of significance, and no asterisk for coefficients that are insignificant.4 Table 14.1 Simple Regression Output Note: SEE = standard error of the estimate; SE = standard error; Sig. = significance.
Evan M. Berman (Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts)
In our pursuit of happiness, we heed the timeless words of management guru Peter Drucker who told us “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” We define key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs) for business. And we use wearable sensors to track steps, calories, insulin levels, and the heart rates of individuals. The numbers keep us so busy, we fail to realize Drucker would never have said those words. The quote is also attributed to W. Edwards Deming, but what he really said is “it is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it –a costly myth.”[
Peter Morville (Planning for Everything: The Design of Paths and Goals)
Every value stream needs two to five key performance indicators (KPIs) that are tracked on a regular basis.
Karen Martin (Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation)
ultimate key performance indicator at Telogis is to help sales sell bigger deals faster,” he said. At Telogis, they improved time to first deal by 70 percent. They reduced the average number of days from 266 to 85. The business benefits are extremely positive and the dream of many enablement professionals
Elay Cohen (Enablement Mastery: Grow Your Business Faster by Aligning Your People, Processes, and Priorities)
Our research found that employee engagement and satisfaction are indicative of employee loyalty and identity, can help reduce burnout, and can drive key organizational outcomes like profitability, productivity, and market share.
Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)