Key Performance Indicator: Feelings

TL;DR: Your body feels the success first.

Fair question. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the units of quantifiable data that tell you how something is doing along with corresponding definitions of “good” and “bad”.

For Project Management*, some typical KPIs:

• Planned Vs. Actual Effort Variance (Labor hours) — How much labor in hours has been performed versus the original hours estimate?
  • This tells you how good you are at planning your people’s time
• Planned Vs. Actual Delivery Variance (Schedule duration) — How much work is done versus where it should be according to the plan?
  • This tells you how good you are at putting project schedules together
• Budget Variance Percentage — as of today, are we within budget (and forecasted to stay within budget through completion?)
  • This tells you how good you are estimating total cost of the project
• Profit Margin %s — Is the business making money from doing this project?
  • This tells you how good you are at managing the resources allocated according to the budget set
• On-time Project Completion percentage — How good are you at delivering projects on time?
  • This tells you how good you are at setting stakeholder expectations
    

For Program Management* —

• Utilization Rate — Of the people on the team, are they all working on projects that drive growth or revenue?
  • This tells you how effective your team is within your organization with bringing in (and keeping money) in the organization
• Churn Rate — Of the people on the team, are they still here?
  • This tells you how satisfied and stable the team is
• On-time Project Completion percentage — How good is your team at delivering projects on time?
  • This tells you how well the team is managing their team

For Product Management* —

• Customer Satisfaction — are your customers happy with the product delivered?
  • This tells you if your customer is getting satisfactory service from you
• Delivery Velocity — what is the average time to deliver a new feature (or product) to the hands of the customer?
  • This tells you if your team is efficient
• User Adoption — are your customers actually using the product?
  • This tells you if your product is actually making an impact in the marketplace
• ROI — is your effort to deliver the product worth what the business gets back?
  • This tells you if your product or feature was worth the effort, to your customer AND your business

* – The list above is not complete at all, it’s meant to serve as an illustration to the types of KPIs that are defined and measured for the well-defined roles. Each discipline has a more extensive list, but the point of this article is less about P-management KPI definition and more about Critical Thinking Communication’s KPI.

The list above gives a sense of an objective and concrete way of saying something was ‘good’ (or ‘bad’), but what I have learned over the years is that FEELINGS are just as powerful of a KPI metric as any. Yes, FEELINGS.

I know… it feels a little soft, blurry, and maybe a little eye-rolly, but hear me out:

1. You know that feeling when you’re deep into something and you find your flow?
2. You know that feeling when you’ve had a hard a workout, but you feel awesome afterwards…that “hurts so good” feeling?
3. You know that feeling after you come out of a meeting where you feel revitalized (and probably exhausted) all at the same time because you worked through some hard things?

Yeah…that feeling of “being productive”…the feeling that you didn’t waste your time.

• You were able to unblock yourself or others from being able to move to the next step…you see that ‘a-ha’ moment in their eyes or hear it in their voice
• You were able to finally get clarity on something that you were struggling to understand
• You were able to finally agree on something with someone else (or even yourself) that would help you sleep at night

Time is one of the most valuable resources in our life. We always look to make the most of our time, and we all know that feeling (even if we only admit it to ourselves) of what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ use of our own time.

The other feeling that is an output of effective Critical Thinking Communication is this sense of ‘lightness’ — you feel like you’re carrying less weight, even if for a short moment, that there is one less thing to shoulder, to weigh your mental list down, to take up energy. I’m sure there are many meetings where you came out of where NEW things were added to your to-do list, but I bet it’s because you were able to close out one step to now be onto the next thing. Getting to ‘next’ is a win.

I will dive more into how you can use feelings during Critical Thinking Communication structures, but at a meta level, my primary metric of success truly is: “if the team is feeling productive; then it’s working.” Secondary benefitting KPIs are: increased delivery velocity, reduced resource waste, less defects and improved team satisfaction.

If none of this resonates with you, then I would love to work with you. The bodily sensation of “feeling productive” is something anyone can experience. It can be fleeting or it can be persistent, but when you feel it, you know it.

I’d love to hear from you