Managing A World Class Team: Part 3 – Unlocking Potential

If you haven’t figured it out (from our puzzle), we are continuing our series on Managing A World Class Team, by jumping into Key Performance Indicators. To catch up on the previous blogs from the series check out Recruitment Time (again).

Now if you’re as dedicated to our mentoring tips as much as we are dedicated to writing them, I’m sure you’ll point an incriminating finger and remind us that we’ve touched on this subject in our blog on job descriptions.

And you’re not wrong. In fact, you’re extremely right (give yourselves a pat on the back).
They are a part of job descriptions.

But we think that they are so important in acting as the crux of management that we thought we dedicate a whole page to them!

I’m sure KPI’s would love us almost as much as we love them.

Back to Basics

In line with many of our coaching tips on how to build the best team, we think that simplicity is equivalent to beauty.

Why do 10, 20, 50 or 100 Key Performance Indicators that are unnecessary and unimportant?

3 to 6 is a good number to run with, with 8 being the upper limit. That way, your KPI’s remain focused on getting the most from your team and guiding them to the goals that they want to achieve.

The KPI’s of KPI’s

So what sort of criteria should you follow when you develop KPI’s (essentially the key performance indicators for good key performance indicators!).

We suggest there are two important “do’s” of KPI’s.

Keep them measurable and keep them objective.

By this, you keep your team productive and motivated by the fact that your judgements are not dependent on which side of the bed you woke up in the morning. They also relate to the key roles of the team members, and keep them on task.

Dot Your i’s and Cross Your t’s

Now comes the nitty gritty part of KPI’s; which areas should they cover.

In our many years of coaching, guiding and building KPI’s for our small and medium size business clients, we have seen three main areas that KPI’s should fit into.

They are cost, quality and time. Let me explain what I mean:

Cost
Cost KPI’s should give a direct, measurable and objective (remember the pointers from before?) related directly to a costing metric.

For example, an easy one to think of would an Office Manager. Their KPI’s could be “to identify cost saving and negotiation opportunities in relation to office supplies by maintaining expenses at $1,000 per quarter”.

Quality
Like their close cousin, quality KPI’s follow the same principles as cost performance indicators.

For example, for a customer service agent in your company, you might have a KPI that reads “achieving only 1 valid complaint out of a 100 orders measured on a monthly basis”.

Is it objective? Tick.

Is it measurable? Tick.

Time
The crux of it doesn’t need a much of an introduction (if you haven’t got it done pat on our principles yet, go back and read the last few paragraphs).

So, an example for a time KPI may be “100% of jobs closed and invoiced within 7 days of delivery”.

Easy, simple and practical. You can’t go wrong.

There’s no (KP) I in Team

Like all our other posts and blogs on managing a sales team, we’ve consistently implored to use your teams as a guide for helping get the most out of them.

Don’t let KPI’s be any different!

Keep your team involved in the process of their creation and that way you both hold a vested interest in the overall success of your business and the success of your employee.

Have you found any particular KPI’s that work well in particular? Or maybe you’ve got a few hard and fast rules that have worked equally as well for you?

Share them with us, we’d love to hear how we can better coach and mentor our clients from you guys at the coal face!