Key performance indicator
 A middle manager’s big book of fun concepts, yesterday
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Key performance indicator /kiː pəˈfɔːm(ə)ns ˈɪndɪkeɪtə/ (n.)
A metric. A box to tick. A second-order derivative used to explain a complicated concept to a dullard with no background who has no hope of understanding it, so he can quantify it.
Something less edifying than a film’s audio-description soundtrack, but intended to have the same effect. A functional, if ungainly, transmission of basic ideas designed for someone who is physically incapable of consuming them in their native state.
Just one wouldn’t usually send in the visually impaired to review movies — don’t @ me, folks — nor should one send in the clowns to evaluate complex legal processes, but this doesn’t stop it happening, daily.
So, for a poor ISDA negotiator, charged with navigating thousands of policies any the kaleidoscope of control functions to conclude an agreement which achieves the firm’s trading objectives while protecting its exposure to its counterparties, key performance indicators will be not the quality of the agreed termination events nor the validity of the security package, much less the practicality of margining arrangements, the sensitivity of the NAV triggers or the robustness of the indemnity, but how quickly she finishes the negotiation.
KPIs and the modernist way
As a quantified abstraction of an otherwise intractable activity, one can immediately identify key performance indicators as a tool from the modernist PlayBook. “I do not understand this bizarre pantomime of subject matter expertise, so I will reduce it to it countable functions and try to understand those.”
Of course the countable, formal part of of what a subject matter expert does is is precisely the an interesting part. An expert will tell you that what she does is ineffable, difficult to describe comma and impossible to quantify. Sometimes
Take the legal department. Because the legal function is not part of the operational framework of the firm, and it's designed to deal with the unexpected, novel scenarios and situations which have not been encountered before and in many cases will not happen again, the value that it adds is very difficult to articulate. It is not a function of things done, time spent, units produced. The value is often oblique, does not accrue immediately, or obviously comma and sometimes the entire value of a lawyers input subsists in in the lack of consequences. A well-structured response to a query may avoid 18 months of dispute and litigation. That single response is therefore more valuable than any value created in the 18-month dispute.
It may be difficult to precisely articulate the means by which lawyers add value; by contrast it is very easy to indicate ways in which lawyers do not not. The modern office worker is beset with box taking, form filling, policy complying and carrying out needless procedural steps largely to satisfy the need to generate key performance indicators. Have as your key performance indicator the removal of these steps.