The Great Mismatch
🎯 The Disconnect
PMOs love metrics. Executives love results.
Between them lies a mountain of colorful charts, alignment meetings, and mutual confusion.
If your exec’s eyes glaze over during your metrics review, congratulations — you’ve joined 80% of PMOs.
💬 What They Want
- Forward-looking data: “Where are we headed?”
- Confidence levels: “How likely is delivery success?”
- Alignment: “Are these projects tied to strategy?”
🚫 What They Don’t Want
- Output counts (“# of projects delivered”).
- Lagging indicators (“We hit 90% milestones… last quarter”).
- Reports that say “green” when everyone feels red.
💡 5 Solutions for Bridging the KPI Gap
1️⃣ Translate PMO metrics into business outcomes.
“On-time delivery” → “time-to-value acceleration.”
2️⃣ Add executive context.
Pair every metric with: “Why this matters to our strategy.”
3️⃣ Make your KPIs predictive.
Show risk exposure, trend velocity, and confidence scores.
4️⃣ Adopt a ‘metric sunset’ policy.
If nobody uses it in 3 months — kill it.
5️⃣ Create an Executive KPI Scorecard.
Top 5 metrics tied directly to business goals. No fluff.
📈 Case Studies + Data
1️⃣ Gartner:
Only 27% of execs say PMO reports “influence strategic decisions.” That’s a cry for relevance.
2️⃣ HP Enterprise:
Reduced reports from 70 metrics to 12 → gained 2 hours back per exec per month.
3️⃣ PepsiCo:
Shifted to “value realization metrics” → PMO seen as strategic, not bureaucratic.
🤣 Anecdote
An exec once asked a PMO lead, “What’s your biggest success this quarter?”
She replied, “We improved our metrics framework by 30%.”
He said, “That’s nice — did we make any money?”
💬 Let’s talk
1️⃣ What metric truly moves executive confidence?
2️⃣ How do you measure “PMO value” in your org?
3️⃣ Should PMOs report fewer metrics or better stories?
4️⃣ What’s the funniest “KPI gone wrong” you’ve seen?
5️⃣ How do you convince leadership that “green” isn’t always good?
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