We all know them. The team meetings at the KPI board. And for many these meetings are a daily annoyance. Numbers with no meaning and still you are expected to drive improvement activities based on them. Often these meetings are uncomfortable for everyone and are sooner or later either removed or scaled down to be more infrequent.

But the alternative is amazing. When teams start to be engaged in the meetings the energy is fantastic and the results will follow. The question is – what will it take to get there ?

Team meetings at the KPI board are one of the strongest acid tests of lean organisation maturity. These meetings are depending on many factors to be in place, like:

•The right KPIs driven by strategic priorities

•Team competences, clear roles and autonomy

•Management presence and cross functional cooperation

The typical mistake is to establish daily KPI board meetings as an isolated activity in a department (often a production area) and focus solely on local process optimization But often people don’t know the rationale behind the measures and often senior management are not following if targets are met or not. This kills team motivation.

Instead you need to establish the unbroken chain of performance reviews and target setting. From real time process performance with immediate action to corporate strategic decisions. This will require fixed KPI team meetings at all levels of the organisation with standard procedures for escalation and target setting. If setup correctly, any performance deviation at a lower level will impact performance on above levels. This will first of all ensure attention to performance on all levels and second it will ensure that all teams know how they contribute to overall company performance.