Rebellious Thoughts #54 - 🤘 KPIs Kill Common Sense

Hey Rebels!

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YEW!

Let’s get into today’s newsletter:

“Shhhh listen listen….”

That’s the sound common sense makes when it screams for attention!! Hahaha

The longer you have been in business the better the chances that you have grown deaf to the sounds of common sense trying to break free from a KPI jail!

And it is not just KPIs… job descriptions, Gantt charts, scripted customer calls, goal setting, regulation, processes… all these artefacts we create to organise and run our businesses also act as the worst type of common sense anaesthetic.

There’s of course a good side to these artefacts, without them it is hard to do business, it would be absolute chaos… but despite our best intentions, there is a downside to them too, and in aggregation, they can actually become deadly to your business.

Let’s see if I can challenge you to see the world a little differently.

Let me give you some examples:

Job Descriptions

When we write a job description (JD) we generally spend a lot of effort writing task details, objectives, who the role works with — detailed expectations of WHAT the role does and less WHY it actually exists.

When I started at Lonely Planet my first role ever was called “Cartographer/Designer” - our job description simply explained how to make beautiful, accurate printed maps, layout books, select images, draw chapter ends, commission illustrations, work with editors and so on.

We cartographers were proud to use map sources sometimes as crazy as a napkin the author drew in the back streets of Ñorquinco to produce amazing maps travellers used to get around and find all the amazing points of interest.

The majority of our time was spent trying to achieve consistency… ie: if the text said “You’ll find the restaurant right across the road from the museum” the map reflected exactly that.

So - we made beautifully consistent printed maps. Laboriously looking at the hundreds of elements on the map to make sure travellers could follow them, search them, match that restaurant to that street and be able to get to it hassle-free.

And then Open Street Maps, Google and several others said “we are going to map the world and make it digitally available to all”

And guess what… they did!

And our maps became irrelevant.

Even though we were following the job description to perfection, it was not enough.

What was missing?

Our job description should have said: “Your job is to ensure travellers know where they are and how to get to where they want to go - use whatever tool, system, software, mechanism you can to help their problem go away”

Imagine if we did focus on solving the customer problem?

Maybe we would have created or invested early and figured out a way to digitally map the world and gift people with the better solution.

Of course, not all roles in a business are customer-facing, but remember that even if your job is to solve an internal customer problem (like HR, Finance, etc) you need to be clear what customer problem you solve that helps solve the end customer problem.

Go through your job description, go through your team’s, is it clear what customer problem you and they are solving?

Okay, another one:

KPIs

Well, now that I made the above point, it’s obvious that when KPI job descriptions that are not pointing correctly at the customer problem, we kill common sense.

But here is another reason why KPIs kill common sense.

KPIs are too static for the pace of change we are experiencing.

The only way to make any KPI relevant is to review it daily!

That’s a massive tax...almost impossible.

So once we set them we tend to stick with them and follow without questioning.

Remember, job descriptions and KPIs don’t move as fast as the customer.

So have a few, they do help you measure stuff, but please regularly update them!

GANTT CHARTS

So Mr Gantt invented them over 100 years ago to help manage projects - and like I said before, despite his best intentions what he ended up creating was a way to kill common sense! (Ufff I know massive claim! Stay with me I’m just being provocative)

Back in the day at Lonely Planet one of the roles I did was Scheduling Manager! (What me? Yep! And I was really good at it haha)

Anyway - when I jumped on the role I was shown the ropes and explained how long editing took, and mapping, and proofing and layout and and and.

All information collected and agreed upon by dozens of people over 3 decades of bookmaking.

We were remarkably accurate, depending on how many pages and several other factors I would schedule 6 weeks for editing, and 2 weeks for proofing, and 4 weeks for layout and so on.

I made pretty Gantt charts of it with milestones and people followed them.

It occurred to me one day: “Am I super accurate with this or people are taking exactly the amount of time I give them?”

So I asked the question - if there was no schedule… how fast could we go?

I spoke with a close friend internally who didn’t have the rebellious brand I did and with some of his thinking and his softer touch, we grabbed a group of legends and said: “here is the manuscript - turn it into a book - as fast as possible!”

What on average took 12 weeks took only 4 weeks - 1/3!!!!

So Gantt charts not only kill common sense but they also kill fairies! Hahaha stop doing Gantt charts.

Ok enough, you get the point - observe the tension between the artefacts that help us run our businesses and simultaneously kill common sense. You can have a think of scripted customer calls and goal setting and the rest ;-)

Yew!

Love,

G

P.S. Hey!! Earlier this week I announced the pre-sale (with a 46% discount!) of the Shake Up! program… a program full of common sense!

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LEARN MORE

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Come and see The Essential Workers - woooo!  
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All money raised will go to men’s mental health!

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