Your performance is typically graded on lagging metrics, but you can improve your performance only by focusing on leading metrics. Do you know the difference, and do you actually focus on leading metrics?
Lagging metrics are measurements of outcomes and they have already happened. For example, the downtime hours of critical equipment last quarter is a lagging metric. You cannot directly affect a lagging metric. If equipment failed, you cannot change that fact.
Leading metrics, by contrast, help you affect lagging metrics in a positive way. Let's say you currently complete 50% of PMs on time for critical equipment. You can directly change this leading metric, and and improvement here will improve the future lagging metric of failure rate. By redirecting maintenance resources toward the PMs, you can increase that leading metric to 100%. Which way will critical equipment failures go — up or down?
So instead of looking at last quarter’s downtime figures, measure how well you’re performing the tasks that reduce downtime and adjust as needed to do better.