Shrikant Angre

Bowling charts is nothing but a scorecard which is used to track KPIs for an individual over the period of a year, either month or quarter wise.
 
Here is a quick image of how a Bowling chart looks like...
 
Below image is of a Policy deployment Bowler chart, which is tracking 5 different targets for an individual for a period of 12 months, month wise.
 

 
Let me explain this chart in more detail..
 
Owner: The name of the employee whose KPIs are being tracked
Organization: The name of the company the person works at
Targets: These are KPIs which the employee is going to measured in the relevant financial year. For example, Revenue Target, Gross or Operating Margin target, SLA Targets like Quality, Cycle Time, On time, AHT, C-Sat, Operations target like Utilization, Productivity, People Targets like E-Sat, Attrition%, Leadership building etc.
Start Point: This is starting point of the KPI.. for example of the Gross Margin of the team is 40%, then the starting point will be 40%.
 
What is Red, yellow and Green color coding?
 
Red color tagging means that the achieved number is 5 to 10% less that the target given. Threshold of 5 to 10% is decided depending upon the criticality of the KPI
Yellow color tagging means that the achieved number is 1 to 4% less that the target given.
Green color tagging means that the achieved number is more than the target.
 
Let me give an example of this is filled:
 
Taking above example of 40% Gross margin as a starting point and reaching an annual target of 50% Gross margin for this FY. then this can be filled in 2 ways.. 
 
i.) By get adding flat target of 50% for each month starting Jan to Dec and then capturing the actual number of Gross Margin achieved for that month. Now this is not at all practical. since the team cannot jump from 40% to 50% in just 1 month.. 
Hence, the 2nd and most appropriate method.
ii) In this method, we gradually increase the margin target by few % points to move up the ladder and therefore by the end of year not just meet the annual target but also are ready to move higher level in the upcoming year.. Here is the example of how that be done.
 

 
Some companies also add a delta row to this to show how far/away we are from the target or how much ahead we are against the target.. in the following manner.
 

 
How are Bowling charts useful?
Bowling charts help in aligning the individuals with the organizations goal and initiatives. It helps in tracking and making necessary amendments or course corrections, just incase things are going off track, rather than discovering a catastrophic failure at the end of the FY. This can also be used as a powerful performance evaluation tool by the organization. It gives necessary motivation to the individual and just makes the system very transparent.  Having such score cards and transparently sharing them with all the leaders help in creating a competitive environment, thus fueling the necessary profitable growth for the organization As an organization, if all the individuals are moving in the right direction, then it is good, but let's say the sales figures for all the sales professionals are 10-15% down than the given target, then the organization will have to go out more aggressively on sales campaign, marketing activities etc.. to boost the sales figures. Limitations of a Bowling chart:
 One of the limitation of the bowling chart is let's say an individual has all his KPIs in green, mid year and the variance is say 2-3%, but there is huge scope to even push the envelope further and achieve higher numbers than the target given. Then complacency might set in and in spite of having further scope to improve the numbers, no efforts will be put in..  The reverse also holds true, let's say the person has huge deficit (double digits) in his achieved vs target numbers, then the person is completely demotivated and loose focus and thus it becomes very difficult to move ahead. How to mitigate this limitation?
One of the ways to mitigate this is by defining the KPIs in such a way that the more you achieve the more reward you can reap/enjoy in the form of incentives/bonuses etc. This way the company can still enjoy further good performance without any hindrances or biases. For the under performing people, have adequate HR (HR-BP, Talent Development) and HOD intervention to ensure that the moral of the those employees is always high and action is taken only against "will issue" type of employees.    

Bowling charts is nothing but a scorecard which is used to track KPIs for an individual over the period of a year, either month or quarter wise.
 
Here is a quick image of how a Bowling chart looks like...
 
Below image is of a Policy deployment Bowler chart, which is tracking 5 different targets for an individual for a period of 12 months, month wise.
 

 
Let me explain this chart in more detail..
 
Owner: The name of the employee whose KPIs are being tracked
Organization: The name of the company the person works at
Targets: These are KPIs which the employee is going to measured in the relevant financial year. For example, Revenue Target, Gross or Operating Margin target, SLA Targets like Quality, Cycle Time, On time, AHT, C-Sat, Operations target like Utilization, Productivity, People Targets like E-Sat, Attrition%, Leadership building etc.
Start Point: This is starting point of the KPI.. for example of the Gross Margin of the team is 40%, then the starting point will be 40%.
 
What is Red, yellow and Green color coding?
 
Red color tagging means that the achieved number is 5 to 10% less that the target given. Threshold of 5 to 10% is decided depending upon the criticality of the KPI
Yellow color tagging means that the achieved number is 1 to 4% less that the target given.
Green color tagging means that the achieved number is more than the target.
 
Let me give an example of this is filled:
 
Taking above example of 40% Gross margin as a starting point and reaching an annual target of 50% Gross margin for this FY. then this can be filled in 2 ways.. 
 
i.) By get adding flat target of 50% for each month starting Jan to Dec and then capturing the actual number of Gross Margin achieved for that month. Now this is not at all practical. since the team cannot jump from 40% to 50% in just 1 month.. 
Hence, the 2nd and most appropriate method.
ii) In this method, we gradually increase the margin target by few % points to move up the ladder and therefore by the end of year not just meet the annual target but also are ready to move higher level in the upcoming year.. Here is the example of how that be done.
 

 
Some companies also add a delta row to this to show how far/away we are from the target or how much ahead we are against the target.. in the following manner.
 

 
How are Bowling charts useful?
Bowling charts help in aligning the individuals with the organizations goal and initiatives. It helps in tracking and making necessary amendments or course corrections, just incase things are going off track, rather than discovering a catastrophic failure at the end of the FY. This can also be used as a powerful performance evaluation tool by the organization. It gives necessary motivation to the individual and just makes the system very transparent.  Having such score cards and transparently sharing them with all the leaders help in creating a competitive environment, thus fueling the necessary profitable growth for the organization As an organization, if all the individuals are moving in the right direction, then it is good, but let's say the sales figures for all the sales professionals are 10-15% down than the given target, then the organization will have to go out more aggressively on sales campaign, marketing activities etc.. to boost the sales figures. Limitations of a Bowling chart:
 One of the limitation of the bowling chart is let's say an individual has all his KPIs in green, mid year and the variance is say 2-3%, but there is huge scope to even push the envelope further and achieve higher numbers than the target given. Then complacency might set in and in spite of having further scope to improve the numbers, no efforts will be put in..  The reverse also holds true, let's say the person has huge deficit (double digits) in his achieved vs target numbers, then the person is completely demotivated and loose focus and thus it becomes very difficult to move ahead. How to mitigate this limitation?
One of the ways to mitigate this is by defining the KPIs in such a way that the more you achieve the more reward you can reap/enjoy in the form of incentives/bonuses etc. This way the company can still enjoy further good performance without any hindrances or biases. For the under performing people, have adequate HR (HR-BP, Talent Development) and HOD intervention to ensure that the moral of the those employees is always high and action is taken only against "will issue" type of employees.    

Cynefin Framework is a concept/framework which helps in decision making in any type of situation/environment.
 
History: Cynefin framework is developed by Dave Snowden in 1999, while he was working for IBM global services. Cynefin is Welsh word and means "Habitat"
 
What is Cynefin Framework?
 
Cynefin Framework has 5 decision making contexts or domains and they are as follows:
 
1. Simple or obvious also in the past called as known
2. Complicated (in the past called as knowable)
3. Complex
4. Chaotic
5. Disorder
 

 
1. Simple or obvious domain :-
- This domain represents known-knowns. This means that the relationship between cause and effect is clearly established in this situation.
- We can also say that the situation is stable.
- This is a situation where the rules/instructions are clearly defined and standard operating procedures (SOPs) are clearly established.
- The advice to the leadership team in this situation is Sense - Categorize - Respond.
- This situation is also termed as the best practice
 
Example: If a customer fails to make a credit card payment before the due date and calls up customer care, then the customer care clearly knows based on the SOPs laid how to respond to a customer in this case and communicate the next steps.
 
2. Complicated or knowable domain :-
- This is a domain of known-unknowns. This means that the relationship between cause and effect is not clearly defined, but has range of answers and hence needs experts or subject matter experts to establish the relationship between them.
- The advice to the leadership team in this situation is Sense - Analyze - Respond
- In this situation, a leader has to assess the facts, analyze the situation using the expert advice available and considering all the scenarios and then respond to the situation.
 
Example: A customer places an order on an ecommerce site, but complains the order is in a pending state and the payment is not done by his end. In this situation the customer service agent has to analyze the situation and depending upon various scenarios like (either the payment gateway failed, or there is the problem with bank etc.) has  to guide the customer on what to expect in this scenario and the next steps to follow.
 
3. Complex domain:-
- This is a domain of unknown-unknows. This means that the relationship between cause and effect can be established only based on old or retrospective facts and there are no spot on right answers, but patterns to that can emerge.
- The advice in this situation to a leader is Probe - Sense - Respond, which means, the leader has to do a lot of experiments or probe what has happened in the past, take that into consideration and then understand the current situation and respond.
 
Example: A company's group medical insurance policy is perfect example for this type of situation. Whenever a company goes for renewing a group medical insurance policy, the insurance company goes and investigates a lot of old parameters like claim to premium ratio, demographics of the insurers and their dependents, what type of claims are made?, What were the ailments etc. and then decides on the premium amount and benefits for the upcoming year.
 
4. Chaotic domain:-
- This is a chaotic domain as cause and effect are completely unclear or disjoint.
- Act-Sense-Respond: Since there is a lot of confusion prevailing, the leaders are advised to immediate act to stem the bleeding/ongoing problem first. then sense where the stability can be established and then respond by turn the chaotic situation into Complex.  
- Direct communication is one tool that can be use in this situation to help resolve the confusion
 
Example: If you are appointed as a leader of non performing team, which has issues on all 4 quadrants of Balanced Scorecard and especially has disgruntled employees, some of them have resigned and others are about to resign.. Then the, first step of a leader is to understand why there is resentment amongst the people and address that by taking immediate steps. Then work towards solving other business problems.
 
5. Disorder:- 
- This a situation, where there is no clarity on which domain the situation is falling into.. 
- The only way to break the ice here is to break down the constituents into different parts and try to fit them into different domains and start from there.
- Once that is established one can start from moving from chaotic to complex, to complicated and finally simple. 
 
Example: 9/11 terror attach on US or 26th Nov Mumbai terror act is a perfect example of this situation
 
The best way to practice this is to improve the domain of any situation is by moving clockwise i.e. from
Chaotic --> Complex --> Complicated --> Simple