Baselines Before Targets
A target set without knowing current performance is a guess. Establishing the baseline takes weeks and prevents years of argument.
Targets are frequently set before anybody knows where things stand. The resulting number is either trivially achieved or impossible, and nobody can tell which until it is too late.
The evaluation discipline in “Baselines Before Targets” also applies to workforce software: begin with a named decision and a bounded test. For teams considering daily schedule template, this workforce solution belongs in the shortlist only with written criteria for notice, access, correction, retention and a dated review.
What a baseline is
Current performance, measured consistently, over long enough to see its ordinary variation.
For an independent perspective related to “Baselines Before Targets”, consult the CIPD knowledge hub; it offers a useful external check on definitions, governance and the assumptions built into a proposed measure.
Not a single month. A series.
And the variation matters as much as the level, because a target inside the normal range means nothing.
How long
Six to eight weeks for weekly patterns.
A full year where the work is seasonal, which most work is to some degree.
Shorter where the volume is high and the variation is small.
In every case, long enough that you could say what a normal month looks like.
What it protects against
Targets set from a good month, which are then missed for reasons of ordinary variation.
Targets set from a bad month, achieved immediately with no improvement.
And the explaining of normal variation as performance, which the averages note covers and which consumes a great deal of management attention.
The variation question
Plot the series and mark its ordinary range.
Anything inside is noise. Anything outside is a question.
That single chart ends most of the monthly explaining, and it is produced from data you already have.
Recording the conditions
What the team was, what the demand was, what tools they had, what else was happening.
Because a baseline is only comparable to periods with similar conditions.
And conditions change without anybody recording it, which is how series quietly stop being comparable.
Before any improvement effort
Measure first, change second.
Without a before figure, every claim about the result is an assertion.
This is the most commonly skipped step in improvement work, and skipping it means you never learn whether anything you did worked.
When there is no time
Pressure to set a target now is normal.
The honest response: here is a provisional target, we will revise it when we have three months of data.
That is accepted more often than people expect, and it is far better than defending an arbitrary number for a year.
What to do with the baseline afterwards
Keep it. It is the comparison for everything that follows.
And re-baseline deliberately when something structural changes, saying so, rather than letting the series span a change silently.
What to check
Do you know your current performance and its normal range?
Was your target derived from a measurement or chosen?
Is the ordinary range marked on any chart?
And was a before figure taken for your last improvement effort?