KPIs Without Love. Why Metrics Alone Won’t Save Your Business

By Andrew Lenti , Managing Director at Presto PDCA

To Be a "KPI Person", You Really Have to Love Your Business!

Over the past 10 years as a software provider, I’ve helped dozens of managers and executives transform the way they use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). I’ve seen firsthand how the right data, presented clearly and acted on consistently, can revolutionise an organisation’s performance. But here’s the hard truth: no matter how slick your dashboard, no matter how precise your KPIs, they are worthless, sometimes even harmful without one critical ingredient: discipline.

And that discipline must start at the top.

I call it KPI Cadence. It’s not just about reviewing numbers in meetings. It’s about embedding a rhythm in the organisation, a cycle of review, issue identification, action planning, and most importantly, follow-through. Without this cadence, KPIs quickly turn into weapons of blame or, worse, ignored wallpaper.

In too many businesses, especially small ones, the discipline to work with KPIs just doesn’t exist. Owners and team leads tell me they don’t have time. Or they don’t know what the right KPIs are. Or they don’t see the point. But the truth is, if you don’t build this habit into your management style, you’re not really leading, you’re reacting.

One of the most revealing tools I use to help explain this phenomenom is a diagram I call the KPI Cadence Pyramid. It flips the typical corporate hierarchy on its head. At the top of the pyramid are team leads, who are closest to the action and therefore should be focused heavily on lead KPIs which in most cases should be part of their daily team huddles. Here we are speaking about those predictive indicators that drive performance. At the bottom are board members, who focus primarily on lag KPIs; outcomes, financials, long-term results. The pyramid shows not just who should be looking at what, but also the proportional weight each level should place on action-oriented versus outcome-oriented indicators.

The insight here is that KPI discipline isn’t just for analysts or COOs, it’s a leadership function. And it must cascade.

It’s tempting to believe a powerful KPI tool will fix your performance problems. But software doesn’t build culture. Cadence does. Culture forms when reviewing KPIs becomes second nature; when root causes are explored rather than glossed over; and when leaders at every level take accountability for not just reporting numbers, but improving them.

If you want to become a true “KPI person,” you need more than a love for data. You need a deep, day-in-day-out love for your business and your people—because real performance improvement isn’t built in spreadsheets. It’s built in the habits of the team.

And that starts with you.

P.S. We recently hosted a webinar showcasing how our strategy platform helped a multi-site European manufacturing company embed KPI review cadence across all levels of leadership. By combining Hoshin Kanri logic with our new strategy cascade and bowler chart reporting features, their teams aligned top-level goals with real-time performance discussions.

👉 Watch the full webinar here.