10 KPI graphs for the Board

By David Parmenter

In most organizations that have boards, there is a major conflict of interest over what information is appropriate for the board to receive. Because the board’s role is clearly one of governance and not of management, it is totally inappropriate to be providing the board with KPIs.

To me, KPIs are the very heart of management. Used properly, many of them are monitored 24/7 or at least weekly; they are certainly not performance measures to be reported monthly or bimonthly to the board.

We need indicators of overall performance that need only be reviewed on a monthly or bimonthly basis. These measures are the key result indicators (KRIs) . Typically, a board would need to see between 9 and 12 graphs covering the critical success factors and outcome statements.

These measures work particularly well in helping the board focus on strategic, rather than management issues, and they will support management in their thrust to move board meetings away from the monthly cycle. These KRIs are best reported in a dashboard (as illustrated by Exhibit 18.13 from the book) with the graphs, summary financials, and commentary all appearing on the page.

10 Key Result Indicator graphs for the Board

These measures are called, in my terminology, key result indicators (KRIs). Typically, a Board would need to see between six and twelve graphs covering the critical success factors and ensuring all six BSC perspectives are covered. some of them might include:

Staff satisfaction:
Expenses to revenue as a ratio:
Customer satisfaction:
Value of new business:
Net profit before tax (NPBT):
Health & Safety:
Return on capital employed (ROCE):
Cashflow:
Capacity utilisation:

For more information access David Parmenter’s implementation guides that contain his latest thinking along with supporting electronic media to get you started.

Guidelines for designing KPI reports to the C-Suite

In my KPI book, I have setout a number of examples of reporting templates. See an extract of my Chapter 10 Reporting Performance measures from Key Performance Indicators 4th edition.