Planning and Designing Effective Metrics

Metrics are a hot topic. Executive leadership, boards of directors, management, and customers are all asking for data-based decisions. As a result, many managers, professionals, and change agents are asked to develop metrics, but have no clear idea of how to produce meaningful ones. Wouldn’t it be great to have a fast, simple explanation of how to plan for and then design measurements to improve your organization?

Planning and Designing Effective Metrics—an abridged version of author and metrics expert Martin Klubeck's Metrics: How to Improve Key Business Results—provides that explanation and the tools you'll need to make your organization more effective. Not only does this brief book explain the "why" of metrics, but it walks you through a step-by-step process to create a clear picture of organizational health and how well you satisfy customer needs.

This book:

Provides a guide for planning and designing useful metrics based on your unique organizational needs
Offers the theory behind metrics to help you get exponentially better practical results
Shows how to select and use the proper tools for creating, implementing, and using metrics
Provides examples of how to identify, collect, analyze, and report metrics that will be immediately useful for improving all aspects of the enterprise

Planning and Designing Effective Metrics will help you to measure the right things, the right way—the first time. No wasted effort, no chasing data. You will learn how to create valuable measures of organizational success, like repeat customers, customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth advertising. That will help you not only to improve organizational results—you'll also multiply your career opportunities.

What you’ll learn

Understand the difference between data, measures, information, and metrics
Identify root performance questions to ensure you build the right metrics
Develop meaningful and accurate metrics
Formulate practical answers to data-based questions
Learn one of the most powerful methods yet invented for improving organizational results
Who this book is for

Planning and Designing Effective Metrics was written for managers in the for-profit and nonprofit worlds who need to improve key results: department heads, middle managers, analysts, IT professionals, and change agents.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How You Use Metrics
Establishing a Common Language
Where to Begin: Planning a Good Metric
Using Metrics as Indicators
Triangulation: Essential to Creating Effective Metrics
Establishing Standards and Benchmarks
Appendix: Metrics Tools to Use and Useful Resources