key performance indicator (KPI)

Definition

A quantifiable metric used to evaluate success in meeting objectives. The numbers your boss obsesses over and that determine whether you get a bonus or a performance improvement plan.

Example Usage

Our primary KPIs for this quarter are customer acquisition cost and monthly recurring revenue.

Origin

Management theory from the early 20th century, formalized in business context in the 1980s-90s

Fun Fact

Companies often track so many KPIs that they become KBI (Key Bewildering Indicators), defeating the entire purpose of having 'key' metrics.

Source: Business management and performance measurement terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

learning curve

The rate at which someone acquires new skills or knowledge over time, typically depicted as a graph. Often used to excuse poor performance or justify why that new software implementation is a disaster.

💼 Corporate / Business

Intermediate

Core Competency

The one thing your company claims to be really good at, which is usually just the thing you've been doing the longest. Like a restaurant saying their core competency is food -- technically true but not exactly inspiring.

💼 Corporate / Business

Intermediate

retro

The fashionable celebration of things from decades past, because apparently we've run out of new ideas. In business contexts, short for 'retrospective'—a meeting where teams discuss what went wrong and promise to do better next time (spoiler: they won't). The aesthetic choice that lets you charge premium prices for furniture that looks suspiciously like what your grandparents threw out.

💼 Corporate / Business

Beginner

pet project

An initiative someone powerful is personally invested in, making it politically untouchable regardless of merit or ROI. Where rational resource allocation goes to die.

💼 Corporate / Business

Beginner

Empower

To give someone the illusion of authority while retaining all actual decision-making power. Corporations empower employees the way a parent empowers a toddler by letting them choose between two pre-selected outfits.

💼 Corporate / Business

Beginner

committee

A formal group of people appointed to accomplish a specific task, investigate an issue, or make decisions, typically through the most inefficient process possible. These organizational constructs are where action items go to die and meetings multiply like rabbits, operating under the principle that no one person should be held accountable when a group can share the blame. The corporate world's favorite way to look busy while avoiding actual decisions.

💼 Corporate / Business

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