Last week, writing about “Why Corporate Startup’s fail too early in Emerging Markets”,
http://expatlifetoolkit.dinstudio.com/diary_6_2.html
I promised to come back with L.I.F.E. KPI’s with tested and proven correlation to personal and professional success of your Startup Leader in an Emerging Market. Here I keep my promise (still keeping some to myself for the book which will come soon!).
So, you have your Startup leader in place and (s)he has passed the first 15 DAYS test by displaying determination and good signs of adaptability to the new country and the task, or at least, anything indicating the opposite was not diagnosed…now what?
Now, you are ready to further stretch him/her by giving the list of the KPI’s you will measure at the end of the 3rd month.
3 months may sound too ambitious or too soon to some. Let me explain why it is not:
Just like the life of a human, the lives of businesses also show the biggest number and speed of changes/development in the early days.
Drawing the analogy, I will call this First Quarter set of KPI’s, “New Born Screening” of the business.
For those who are not familiar with this term or those who have not yet gone through this nervous but rewarding experience of having a baby, let me give you the quote from Wikipedia:
“Newborn screening is the process by which infants are screened shortly after birth for a list of disorders that are treatable, but difficult or impossible to detect clinically. Whole blood samples are collected from the infant's heel on specially designed filter paper, and then tested for a panel of disorders. The disorders tested can vary from region to region, based on funding and the prevalence of a condition in the population.”
You see the analogy, right?
We are looking for “disorders that are treatable or fatal”.
NBS is done as early as in the first week of the life of a newborn and it diagnoses (if any) the metabolic, hormonal or genetic disorders that would affect all the rest of the life.
Similarly, the “test” you will carry out at the end of the 3rd Month of your Startup (Leader) will tell you what kind of problems might be waiting for the (assigned leader of the) business.
Of course there are certain challenges in terms of measurability (interpretation) and standardization (country to country) of KPI’s I will list below; so actually some companies (who can afford it) go to 3rd Parties expert in psychological testing of “soft” skills crucial for overseas success.
I, not being here trying to sell (YET ;)) any service, will stay simple and tell you some of the KPI’s which I throughout the years, found reliable enough to see if the Startup Expatriate you have parachuted to emerging market, is good enough to live, work and succeed in a different culture
Expectedly, my 4 KPI’s are related to 4 pillars of my Toolkit, this Blog is dedicated to; namely:
L anguage I nteraction F un E mpathy
For those not familiar with my L.I.F.E. acronym: http://expatlifetoolkit.dinstudio.com/diary_1_1.html
LANGUAGE (weight 25%)
KPI: The number of idioms/proverbs in the local language, learnt.
Give him 2 minutes to list the idioms/proverbs in the local language and the meanings thereof in English.
Anything above 7 is OUTSTANDING (4 points)
Anything above 5 is VERY GOOD (3 points)
Anything above 3 is ACCEPTABLE (2 points)
Anything below 3 is POOR (1 point)
OR
KPI: The number of local TV/Radio shows whose concept and presenters can be listed
3 is an O (4 pt.’s)
2 is a V (3 pt.’s)
1 is an A (2 pt.’s)
0 is a P (1 pt.’s)
INTERACTION (weight 25%)
KPI: The number of Locals (except colleagues, business partners, service providers (housemaid, gardener, etc…) whose names and relations (s)he can name in 45 seconds.
Anything more than 7 is an O (4 pt.’s)
Anything between 5 and 7 is V (3 pt.’s)
Anything between 3 and 5 2 is A (2 pt.’s)
Anything less than 3 is P (1 pt)
OR
KPI: The number of local traditional dish, listed
3 is an O (4 pt.’s)
2 is a V (3 pt.’s)
1 is an A (2 pt.’s)
0 is a P (1 pt.’s)
FUN (weight 25%)
KPI: The number of leisure time activities carried out in the last three months with the family (if applicable) with locals.
Anything more than 7 is an O (4 pt.’s)
Anything between 5 and 7 is V (3 pt.’s)
Anything between 3 and 5 2 is A (2 pt.’s)
Anything less than 3 is P (1 pt)
OR
KPI: The number of Local NAMES, famous (known) to be leaders of the field (s)he is interested in, listed. This may be anything from Music to Football or Cooking to Aikido.
3 is an O (4 pt.’s)
2 is a V (3 pt.’s)
1 is an A (2 pt.’s)
0 is a P (1 pt.’s)
EMPATHY (weight 25%)
One note here: Most of the clinical methods involve about 60 questions asked to be answered by the person to measure the Empathy level, while I find this pretty biased as most of these questions are easy to be manipulated (sometimes simply by the sub mind) to reach the “desired” result, so I will more focus on a “narrative” method. This way, you will not only have measured the level of digestion of the empathy as a concept, but will also see the level of efforts to learn and interact with the Locals.
KPI: The number of local habits, attitudes or believes (political, cultural, religious) which is culturally NEW, but the reasons to which are understood and explained.
3 is an O (4 pt.’s)
2 is a V (3 pt.’s)
1 is an A (2 pt.’s)
0 is a P (1 pt.’s)
OR
KPI: The number of historical events in the last 100 years, which one may think, changed the life styles or political landscape of the country and people, listed.
3 is an O (4 pt.’s)
2 is a V (3 pt.’s)
1 is an A (2 pt.’s)
0 is a P (1 pt.’s)
As you may have noticed, almost any of these KPI’s could be written under any other pillar of L.I.F.E.. There is nothing surprising about this. As I wrote in my introduction, all these pillars interact with and define one another.
Two important remarks here:
1) It is important to declare what you will measure soon, so that (s)he has the time to STUDY.
Yes, you hear me right…I want the manager to take his/her time to study and (YES!) manipulate his/her results. Let him/her go and talk to people or use google to come up with local idioms/proverbs or go and read some local history/culture books to come up with examples of areas the cultural differences/peculiarities exist or organize leisure activities to get to know more local people.
Don’t reveal the pointing system you will use, though, so that it will still depend on his/her will and efforts how many words, activities, people or empathy points he/she will come with!
2) Just as for the TECHNICAL Business KPI’s, these SOFT KPI’s should also serve not only measuring things at a given point of time, but more importantly developing performance of people and organizations through a gap analysis, so the overall result of these 4 KPI’s should also be shared with the Management along with a proposed action plan.
If the overall score is anything but 4, this means there is room to perfection, so the Manager should be told to focus on the relatively weaker areas to improve the performance.
If the score is less than 2, this is an alarm bell, so the following three months should be used for observation of the business results. If you see resignations in the team or complaints from team members and/or Business partners, you should be considering a change there before it’s too late and typically this is the first 6 months of the startup.
The more you wait “to see”, the bigger is the threat of a failure, so ACT in a robust and quick way!