What Results Did You Get?

​Lighthearted, human, and full of practical applications, Measuring Success  demystifies measurement for the rest of us.
Illustration of mountains with sun, hot air balloon, trophy, and coin
At some point in your career, chances are good you’ll be asked to report on the success of something. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, it’s going to involve the “M” word: measurement.

​If you don’t think of yourself as a “numbers person,” that can seem like an impossible task — but it doesn’t have to be. At its core, measurement is a straightforward exercise that can help you be a better manager, decision maker, strategist, and communicator.

Measuring Success: A Practical Guide to KPIs

A human, humorous guide to business measurement by author Greg Brisendine. 
There are countless books on the market that talk about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): how to define them, why they’re important, and how you can’t do business without them. Too often though, they miss a critical point: a KPI represents a mission, but it is not the mission itself.

KPIs are the things you pay attention to so you can gauge the health of something else, whether its a project, a department, a company, or a personal endeavor. Measuring Success is about how measurement can help you attain your goals — in business, yes, but really anywhere in life. ​​
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Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Which roles benefit from this book?

You'll benefit from Measuring Success if you are:
A new manager!
​You're learning how
(and where) to steer
​your team
A decision maker!
You're trying to do more with less in a resource-constrained environment.
A people leader!
You want to communicate your team's value and contributions to the C-suite.
A strategist!
You're setting the direction and interested in creating a clear
​picture of success.
Measuring Success is for any curious, ambitious person who is interested in creating improvement. If you have a goal you can imagine, this book is for you.

Excerpts from Measuring Success

“People who want to measure something often believe that the choices are to know nothing (usually where they start) or know everything (which is rarely possible). So in the absence of knowing everything, those people will choose nothing and will say something isn’t measurable. So if I can’t know precisely how much money it will take to open a coffee shop, I can’t possibly open a coffee shop. Except that I can make assumptions about things, and then assign values to those assumptions, then add up those values. While that might not give me the benefit of hindsight about what something actually cost, I definitely have a closer version than nothing.”
“It can seem easy to state your strategies or goals as things you’re avoiding. For example, a goal to reduce customer complaints is too limiting. Choose instead to increase customer satisfaction, even if you measure it by a reduction in complaints (which has its own problems, but isn’t a terrible measure). The key to your mission is that it is what you want, not what you’re trying to avoid. This book is about Measuring Success, not counting failures (that’s usually too easy and there are already plenty of books about how to stop doing things that are unpleasant).”

Ready for KPI magic?