It is used to design and demonstrate alignment from both sides, while reaching a consensus where unspoken needs are met, and where unaware strengths can be brought into the role. It is then used as the basis to formulate KPIs that fit.
What are KPQs?
KPQs are key performance questions. They sensecheck how well a role, tool, or project is completed to progress the organisation towards a goal. They also define and deeply assess the efficacy of your KPIs, and are written as open-ended questions which open up discussion.
What are KPIs?
KPIs are Key Performance Indicators which are derived to answer your KPQs. They provide clear and measurable answers to how well implementation is being executed. KPIs are written in a S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Oriented/Bound) format to be useful.
If your KPIs cannot change
There is an assumption here that the KPIs can change. It works even if they can't.
First, feedback is sent upwards if the KPIs just don't make sense, which prevents a future pothole from happening. If it still doesn't change, the leader and the team member can adjust the work to make strategic progress while still meeting the KPIs.
Ultimately, this helps to uncover assumptions much earlier on.
When completed mindfully
Ensure that your strategic goals are defined prior to starting this exercise. It helps team members and yourself stay accountable for your role through:
- Self articulation of job purpose through drafting the KPQ
- Self assessment of performance
- Self correction on review of KPIs
Guiding tips
1
Use simple language and avoid jargon, anyone should be able to read this and understand the fundamental purpose of your role and gauge performance.
2
KPQs are frequently assessed and frequently updated to reflect strategic and organizational progression as well as changes in circumstances. We recommend a monthly and/or quarterly check-in.
3
Don't be afraid to 'kill your darlings', your first drafts are never perfect so keep restructuring and changing words until it resonates with you.
4
Align with your supervisor if these expectations are in line with the organization strategic direction.
5
Communicate this with your supervisor, team and most importantly, yourself.
6
Develop more than 1 KPQ if needed, but no more than 3 per strategic goal.
Sample KPQ and KPI formats
Fill these in and the question assembles itself. Either stem works.
To what extent is [you/your role] ensuring that [Project/Programme/Organization] is [strategic goal(s)]?
Have a try writing your Key Performance Question. Then put the indicators underneath it that answer it.
A strictly commercial example
Each KPI sits in an area of impact. There are three here: risk, growth and profit. The area is what the KPI is about; the KPI is the indicator that answers it.
This is the Trampoline Park, with three KPIs under one question and the strategic reasoning for each.
How well is Sereyrath ensuring that Fly Phnom Penh is operating well, safely and profitably?
Biggest business risk impact
1
Keeping accident and incident rates at less than 1 per month
Safety is number one, the leadership team decided to make sure this stayed as a priority as a broken leg (or worse) could spell the end of the business. Conversely, a strong commitment to safety is felt positively by parents, building trust in the brand.
Operationally, this evolved the SOPs in the business, for example customers are told they're number one in the lobby and the cafe, but are not number one in the arena and must listen to trainers if they're told to take a break for a minute or risk being injured. This was unexpected but very well received from many parents who appreciated the structure and commitment to safety.
Growth impact
2
Ensuring Mystery Shopping and Customer Feedback scores are over 90% satisfaction with positive NPS Scores
This was tricky, as the board immediately started writing down all the revenue generating ideas and tactics to add as a KPI, from birthday bookings, to selling team building packages to increasing school bookings. The problem was that this increased the KPIs to over 8 different focuses which the board were getting involved in, micro-managing even!
This prompted the owners to take a step back and consider what the Business Manager's role and relationship was, leading to one summarised KPI about growth. And the best way to ensure growth was through phenomenal customer experience, leading to an NPS score and mystery shopping feedback as metrics to see if business growth was on track.
Strategically, this helped simplify meetings and put more ownership and autonomy on the business manager who had experience on the ground and could set her own targets based on product and programme seasonality, for example knowing when school booking seasons began and ended, and could then reorganise resources according to when particular campaigns needed to occur. Operationally, this helped reduce the length of meetings and helped structure agendas for all meetings more strategically.
Profit impact
3
Ensuring that assigned monthly budgets of $XXX are met
The business manager is assigned particular budgets to grow and maintain the business and needs to spend just below the budget. Exceeding the budget can be accepted if approved with a clear case. Underspending on the budget needs also to be justified in case of risks and assumptions occurring we might need to be aware of.
A sustainability and commercial hybrid
The same role, where sustainability strategy and protocols already exist.
How well is Sereyrath ensuring that Fly Phnom Penh is operating well, safely and profitably in accordance with our sustainability guidelines?
The risk KPI does not change. This is already a sustainability and business risk KPI, specifically a social sustainability factor ensuring your end-users and community are not harmed because of your business. The growth KPI does not change either. This commercial intention stays the same.
The profit KPI evolves, to include sustainability related cost measures being met, for example reduced utility bills and waste management savings. Sustainability is largely an efficiency issue, improving resource use through more oversight of the business can lead to improved analysis of what expenses can be reduced. Eventually with business growth, this evolves to include data as a percentage of the sustainability category over units or customers serviced until technology advances to the point where total volumes, waste and emissions are truly renewable and circular.
Then you add a sustainability KPI, and which one depends on what you already have.
A
Ensuring that waste, emissions or energy initiatives are complete and achieving target rates of improvement and impact. Assuming that there's a multi-year strategy and a year long action plan is in place, and our KPIs reflect the time period we're assessing for in the plan.
B
Improve waste to landfill diversion outcomes until the business reaches 90% waste diversion to landfill per month, for this quarter, reaching a 50% waste diversion rate by weight starting with single-use plastics and food waste. Assuming there's no baseline due to resource constraints and the company has instead set targets to improve outcomes based on what is most visible or material to their business.
A strictly sustainability example
Although sustainability has systemic work, ranging from measurement, to iteration, communication and governance, the type of work it does for the business is project based. Once the system is in place, that KPI now evolves into something different, meaning KPIs for sustainability professionals must be reviewed on a regular basis.
Depending on how ambitious the business is about sustainability, you may want to either create a hierarchy to different initiatives, or create KPIs which are systemic to project velocity.
Project velocity KPIs
1
These are KPIs related to efficiency, efficacy and productivity of the team member or department. These are executional and operational KPIs which if implemented well, will give you a better indication if the strategy is effective or not. They imply performance of work is more important to measure than impact alone (not to say impact isn't measured). This also implies that the organisation values productivity and is thus reflected in this relationship design.
Budgeted Project Completion Time. Ensuring projects are kept below budgeted completed times. This blanket KPI reflects the reality that sustainability officers are typically under-resourced, having budgeted earlier on what can be expected means (firstly breathing out the sigh of indignation) then tackling the redesign of the project with the limited constraints. From experience, this budget of time for internal team members is often not made.
Also: number of sustainability projects completed over the quarter. Project success rate, the percentage of projects that successfully achieve their defined objectives this quarter. Stakeholder collaboration, the number of surveys filled by suppliers, customers and community members.
Systemic impact KPIs
2
These are KPIs that track the extent of sustainability integration and assume that only performance matters. These are strategic level KPIs and imply that the team member we're co-designing this KPQ and KPI with is gauged mostly on their ability to deliver results. Therefore implying resource and autonomy is allocated, if not, embedded sustainability will be unintentionally more difficult to achieve. For organisations taking this route, it typically implies they value results over methodology, a 'get it done' mentality which stems from cultures with strong visionary leadership comes with both pros and cons.
Policy and strategy development. Number of policies created this quarter across the business, number adopted by the team, vendors and suppliers, and impact metrics from policies adopted.
Embedding sustainability in core processes. For example, version 1 of sustainability policy updates embedded into 30% of all SOPs in operations and training, namely waste reduction and energy efficiency.
Supply chain sustainability. Onboard suppliers to Circular Procurement policy, for Q1, onboarding the bakery supplier to supply cookies in reusable glass jars replacing plastic packaging.
It's recommended to employ both Project Velocity and Systemic Impact KPIs for much smaller teams. Typically Systemic Impact KPIs are more strategic and placed upon more senior team members who have already exhibited the level of performance, time management and other experience and soft skills needed to deliver projects quickly and effectively.
Remember
Co-designing excellent relationships takes time, in my experience, it takes anywhere from 30 days to 3 months of constant reminders and reviews. As easy as it is to simply give the team member the KPQ, we lose the value of their ability to:
- Truly own their side of the relationship
- Articulate and think forward the needs they're likely to have in executing their side of the relationship (this applies equally to you too!)
- Double check that this role does exactly what it should do to serve the overall strategy
Practice patience. Particularly to junior team members who lack the experience to think strategically, at the same time, if you find yourself losing patience, you may want to review your recruitment process into the company and into the sustainability initiatives and choose differently.
To conclude, relationship design is ultimately about designing a culture of excellence that serves you, or risk defaulting into a culture that nobody really wants.
Give yourself the mental and emotional space, to allow intention to be your guide.
This practice is from The 5 Spheres of Empathy Field Guide. I drafted it in 2018 and have used it since to gauge both the IQ and EQ of new hires, the strategic thinking of potential managers and leaders, and the ability of a new hire to hold space and be in the uncomfortable.
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