Measurement in Management: Informing Leadership Decisions

via Coursera

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Details

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Effort

8 weeks, 1 hour a week
Sessions

Self-Paced
Subtitles

English

Part of

Decision Making: Complete Guide

Overview

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Measurement in Management: Build meaningful KPIs, avoid common measurement mistakes, and improve business performance with practical tools. Taught by world renowned instructor Chris Croft, this course gives managers and professionals a practical, non-technical guide to using measurement to understand, control, and improve performance across the business. Known for his practical, straight talking and engaging style, you will learn practical tools to truly understand numbers within your business. Measurement is one of the most powerful tools available to managers—but only if you measure the right things in the right way. In this practical course, you'll learn how to use measurement to improve performance, make better decisions, and manage more effectively across every area of an organisation. You'll begin by exploring the principles of effective measurement, including when to rely on numbers versus intuition, whether everything can be measured, and the common pitfalls that lead to poor decisions. You'll learn how to avoid misleading comparisons, conflicting KPIs, measurement bias, spurious accuracy, and incorrect conclusions from graphs, trends, and statistical significance. The course then introduces practical measurement techniques for operations, projects, sales, marketing, finance, decision-making, self-management, and people management. You'll explore tools including Pareto analysis, benchmarking, process and output measures, Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Statistical Process Control (SPC), Quality Function Deployment (QFD), process mapping, productivity measures, customer metrics, ROI, profitability analysis, rating charts, risk analysis, and performance indicators for teams and organisations. By the end of the course, you'll be able to design meaningful KPIs, measure what really matters, interpret performance data with confidence, and build practical measurement systems that support continuous improvement, better management, and smarter business decisions.

Syllabus

Welcome, and the risks of measurement

Measurement can improve management, but poor measurement can distort behaviour, create false confidence, and lead to bad decisions. In this module, you will examine common pitfalls such as unfair comparisons, conflicting KPIs, partial measurement, excess metrics, false precision, biased information, misleading graphs, and over interpreted trends. These ideas will help you use data with more discipline and skepticism in day-to-day management.

General principles of measurement

Before choosing metrics in any business function, managers need a few dependable principles that work across contexts. This module introduces practical foundations for focusing on the vital few, comparing performance fairly, measuring both processes and outcomes, learning from others, and building commitment through involvement. These principles can help you design measures that are clear, actionable, and more likely to improve results.

Practical Measurement techniques - Operations and Projects

This module applies measurement directly to operational and project environments, where good metrics can uncover waste, instability, bottlenecks, and missed capacity. You will work through practical techniques for defining success factors, tracking quality and variation, translating customer needs into technical requirements, mapping processes, managing utilization and work in progress, monitoring projects, and measuring productivity. These tools are especially useful for improving flow, throughput, quality, and delivery performance.

Practical Measurement techniques – Sales, Marketing and Strategy

In commercial settings, measurement helps managers align customer value, market choices, and sales execution. This module explores practical ways to identify customer priorities, detect perception gaps, compare products and markets strategically, and monitor pipeline activity, follow-up discipline, and reasons for lost sales. By applying these measures, you can make more informed decisions about where to focus effort, improve customer fit, and strengthen commercial performance.

Practical Measurement techniques – Financial

Financial measurement becomes far more useful when it helps managers ask better questions and make better decisions. In this module, you will examine practical methods for evaluating investments, analyzing profitability, identifying slow-moving stock, monitoring cash conversion, managing receivables and payables, and reading sales, profit, and cash together. These measures can reveal whether a business is generating healthy returns, tying up working capital, or drifting into avoidable financial risk.

Practical Measurement techniques - Self-management

Measurement can improve not only organizations but also the way managers use their own time and attention. This module introduces simple self-management measures that help you become more proactive, preserve space for unexpected work, keep task lists realistic, and stay connected to operational reality through direct observation. These techniques are practical, personal, and immediately useful for improving effectiveness in busy management roles.

Practical Measurement techniques - Decisions

Managers regularly make choices under uncertainty, incomplete information, and competing priorities. This module introduces structured measurement techniques that make those choices more explicit and more defensible, including weighted rating charts, expected-value risk analysis, and impact diagrams. These tools help you compare options systematically while still accounting for trade-offs, uncertainty, and practical constraints.

Practical Measurement techniques - Managing People

People management is one of the most difficult areas to measure well, but it is also one of the most important. In this module, you will explore practical metrics for appraisals, recognition, multi-source feedback, delegated accountability, skills coverage, workforce health, engagement, succession, and talent development. Used thoughtfully, these measures can support a more disciplined, fair, and effective approach to managing people.