Monitor

How do you currently monitor your progress towards your goals?

Are your management reports useful or just interesting?

Do you take actions based on what the reports are telling you?  If not, why not?

Does everyone have the same understanding of what the reports are actually telling you?

Do you know what actions to take?

Unless an organisation actively monitors how well it is performing against its goals, it is unlikely to succeed.  Whilst many management reports produced may “look good” are they able to answer:

• What happened in the previous period?
• Why did that happen?
• What needs to happens next?

In other words, are your reports;

• Useful – tell you progress to strategy
• Usable – quick and easy to interpret, and the interpretations are accurate
• Actionable – can decide on corrective actions that remove the constraints on performance.

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” – Sir Winston Churchill