Key Performance Indicators and Optimisation

Most performance frameworks measure what is easy to count and report it to people who cannot act on it. The result is a monthly pack nobody reads and a set of targets that are quietly gamed, because any measure attached to a consequence will be optimised, including in ways nobody intended. This week is about choosing measures that are hard to game and tied to a decision, and about the uncomfortable discipline of deleting the rest. Delegates work on their own scorecard.

It runs 7 times over the published calendar, in 6 cities and live online. Every date is the same programme with the same content and the same certificate.

• Trace a proposed measure to the decision it would change, and discard it if there is none.
• Tell a lead indicator from a lagging one, and know what each is good for.
• Predict how a target will be gamed before it is published.
• Set a target from demonstrated capability rather than from ambition.
• Retire a measure, including one somebody senior asked for.

Managers accountable for a performance measure, planning and performance staff who design scorecards, and finance business partners who report against them.

Short input, then work. Across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each, the balance sits deliberately with the second: a programme where the trainer talks for six hours produces notes rather than capability.

• Your own material

  Exercises run on situations delegates bring, not on a case study written for a different organisation in a different decade.

• A capped cohort

  Small enough that everybody is asked something. Executive programmes are capped tighter still.

• Practice under scrutiny

  The difficult conversation, the challenged assumption, the decision defended out loud. Judgement is not built by watching.

• Something to take back

  Each day ends with a thing you can use on Monday rather than a slide deck you will not reopen.

• A reduced scorecard for the delegate's own area, every measure tied to a decision.
• A gaming analysis of their current targets, naming the behaviour each one rewards.
• A reporting format that fits what the recipient can actually act on.

A GATI certificate recording what you attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended.

Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record, which is what makes it worth holding. It records participation. This site will not imply one it does not have.