Tracking the success of your strategy
A strategic plan is critical to driving alignment across your organisation; it provides clarity, direction and focus. But how do you know if your company is headed in the right direction, moving towards achieving your goals, delivering your strategic plan? The answer is… measurement.
During the process of building a strategic plan, you set strategic goals; outcomes that the company attempts to reach when crafting a strategic plan. In order to work towards achieving these goals it is important to measure key performance metrics that indicate whether you are on track to achieving your goals.
There are many options for performance metrics, and choosing the right ones can be challenging, but it’s crucial to decide carefully because these metrics will be the focus of effort in your company to help reach the most valuable goals. Tracking the wrong metrics is almost as bad as tracking nothing at all and can lead to poor decision making, along with a waste time and money collecting information that is not going to benefit the business.
When deciding on the right metrics for tracking your strategy’s success, there are a few guiding principles:
Align your metrics to your strategic objectives
Your metrics should be clearly tied to your strategic objectives and move your employees toward the actions you want. Metrics will consider all areas of the business to ensure all departments have clarity on how they impact the overall company goal.
Keep it simple
Don’t overload staff with too many KPIs to track.
Maintain up-to-date data
Be sure your measures include the latest data and are reported on regularly, as this is the key to making them a source of feedback on efforts and an early warning system for problems.
Use dashboards
Be sure to present data clearly using easy to understand visuals. Performance dashboards are an excellent tool for tracking key metrics. Your dashboard metrics should make it impossible to hide from failure.
Review metrics
You should review your metrics to discuss the progress of your strategic plan, and to ensure your choice of measures are the right ones - providing useful information and stimulating the best results.
A well-designed set of KPIs should provide a clear indication of current levels of performance and help your people make better decisions that bring the business closer to achieving its strategic objectives.
The right metrics will:
Help you identify how your business is currently performing
Tell you what to focus on
Provide direction and alignment across the organisation
Help with decision making
Drive desired performance results
Ultimately achieve your strategic goals
Looking to track your own success?
Let us help. To learn more about how to build your strategy contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au
