Find your KPIs! This is a standard call put out by business coaches and mentors to their clients. These are your key performance indicators that are supposed to tell a senior manager if they are producing enough or selling enough or doing whatever correctly. And magically, if it is the right number, then the world is doing just fine.

Or is it?

A few weeks ago, I commented on an article by Dr. Robert Brooks. In a nutshell, he stated that the exam results of children predicted little about their future in the world. I took this logic a step further and applied it to adults in the workplace. They tend to be motivated by many emotive factors, and not just the need for a ‘better statistical performance’ in their unit.

Brooks has just gone on to develop his argument. Reviewing the work of a developmental psychologist, Susan Engel, he looked at “seven abilities and dispositions that kids should acquire or improve upon—and therefore should be measured—while in school”. These could include reading, inquiry, conversation, flexible thinking, engagement, well-being and collaborations.

Interesting, but once again, let me transpose that theory into the work environment. Instead of just examining production performance against bland numbers, often curiously measured by some smart software that few understand, maybe there is an alternative way of thinking for managers to consider.

For example:

• How often does an employee come up with an innovative idea?
• How often does a person go out of their way to help a colleague?
• Are non sales officials encouraged to bring in clients?
• Who forgoes sick leave when they are unwell or when their is a crisis assignment to complete.

Consider your own set up. Think what would happen if all of these items and more were to improve by 5%. How would that impact on the bottom line?

I have see this so often in the past from my work in Jerusalem and Israeli organisations. The top team looks at the stats, analyses and concludes. They often miss out on the micro issues, which the computer cannot print out. And quite often these are built around the stories of individual people.

So, just as in schools, where exam results have a limited use when predicting the destiny of a child, similar restrictions can be placed around the importance of KPIs. Businesses need to think differently.