In my experience, most people don’t really understand how to track quality in a performance management system. Over the years, I’ve seen the strategic objectives and KPIs for dozens of organizations; large and small, commercial and public sector, US and International. I’ve previously claimed customer satisfaction is one of the most used – and least…
One of the recurring themes during my week at HBS was understanding profitability. At first glance, profitability seems like a seductively simple topic. After all, aren’t profits just sales minus costs? The issue is that getting a handle on costs is a non-trivial exercise. For many organizations, the cost of goods sold (COGS) only represents the direct,…
One of the first articles we had to read during my recent HBS class was “Control in an Age of Empowerment” by Robert Simons. Even though the article was published in Harvard Business Review more than 10 years ago, I had never read it before and a quick poll of my classmates suggests very few…