Most KPI meetings have too many KPIs

The forty slide review

A management pack grows the way a garden grows. Someone asks for a number once, it gets added, and it never leaves. Two years later the pack has sixty measures, takes three days to prepare and two hours to present, and the discussion never reaches the third section because the first two consumed the time.

The preparation cost is real, but the bigger loss is attention. When everything is measured, nothing is prioritised, and the meeting becomes a performance of diligence rather than a place where the business decides what to do next.

A measure earns its place by leading to a decision

Before a number goes into the pack, ask what action changes if it moves. If nobody can answer, the number is context, not a key indicator. Context can live in an appendix.

Most businesses run well on somewhere between eight and fifteen measures at leadership level. A typical set covers demand, conversion, margin, cash, delivery or quality, people and one or two items specific to the current priority. Below that level, each function may track more detail, but the leadership conversation stays narrow on purpose.

Every measure needs an owner. Not a department, a person. Shared ownership of a number reliably produces shared explanation and no action.

Run the meeting for decisions

Circulate the numbers in advance and do not present them in the room. Reading slides aloud consumes the hour that should have been spent on the two or three things that are off track.

Spend the time on variance and what will be done about it. A useful format is short: what happened, why, what we are changing, who owns it, by when. Anything that does not fit that format is probably a discussion for a different meeting.

Close by recording decisions and owners, and open the next meeting by reviewing them. That single habit changes the character of the review faster than any dashboard redesign, because people arrive knowing they will be asked.

Dashboards do not manage anything

Investment in reporting tools often assumes that visibility produces action. It does not. A dashboard nobody discusses is an expensive screensaver.

The value sits in the rhythm around it. Weekly for operating measures that move quickly, monthly for performance against plan, quarterly for priorities. Same time, same format, same handful of numbers, with someone accountable for each one.

A closing thought

Better management information usually means less of it, chosen more carefully, discussed more seriously. Cutting the pack in half is often the most productive hour a leadership team spends all quarter.