The New KPIs: Keep People Informed, Involved, Interested, Inspired
I’ve spent enough time around business leaders and content in the productivity space to notice a pattern: we’re obsessed with KPIs. Revenue, churn, acquisition, pipeline — we slice and dice data until it feels like we’ve got control over everything that matters. And don’t get me wrong, numbers matter. But as powerful as numbers are, they don’t always capture the full picture of what makes a business thrive.
I recently stumbled upon an article that offered a refreshing perspective. Instead of defining KPIs as Key Performance Indicators, the author reframed them as:
- Keeping People Informed
- Keeping People Involved
- Keeping People Invested
- Keeping People Interested
It’s more than just a clever play on words. When you think about the teams and organizations that succeed, it’s never only because they’re hitting their quarterly targets. It’s because the people inside them feel aligned, engaged, and inspired to contribute beyond the numbers.
Let’s begin with the first principle.
Keep people Informed
When we talk about information in organizations, we usually think about updates, announcements, reports, and meetings. But what often gets overlooked is the quiet effect flow of information has on how people engage and how they feel about their place. Silence makes people speculate. Need-to-know updates make them cautious. Whereas, consistent, meaningful communication makes them feel trusted.
In simple words, keeping people informed is all about transparency at workplace. When people aren’t sure what’s happening, they second-guess decisions, hold back their ideas, and hesitate to act. But when they trust that information will flow openly, they act with more confidence and take ownership naturally. They don’t need to wonder what decisions are being made in closed rooms or if they are working in the dark. They know enough to execute their tasks with full confidence and contextual clarity.
The organizations that get this right rarely feel like they’re “pushing” their teams forward. For them, progress becomes natural.
Keeping people involved
If information builds trust, involvement builds ownership. A surprising number of leaders still treat involvement as pushing down a decision and getting everyone to agree on it. They only gather opinions after the real decisions have already been made. That is not what involvement means here. Maybe compliance at best and quiet disengagement at worst.
Genuine involvement looks very different. It’s when people aren’t just invited to the table, but their contributions meaningfully shape the decisions. They see their inputs shaping the final direction, and that creates a sense of responsibility no performance review can do.
The difference is easy to spot. In teams where involvement exists only in name or appearance (not in practice), conversations tend to feel superficial. People speak only when asked. Almost everyone agrees without questioning. And, you can see that they don’t really care whatever it is you want to involve them in.
Instead, in teams where involvement is real, discussions are alive. People challenge ideas, bring new perspectives, and fight for their arguments because they know their input matters.
This is the essence of people-driven leadership. Keeping people involved is not about endless consensus. It’s about signaling that decisions aren’t handed down from a distance; they’re built together. And when people feel like co-creators, execution becomes less about compliance and more about commitment.
Keeping people invested
Involvement sparks participation, but investment goes further where people stop working for an organization and start working with it. People are more persistent, adaptive, and creative when they believe their effort is tied to meaningful outcomes. In other words, investment is essentially the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation that keeps an employee engaged at work.
You can see the difference in how people show up. An uninvested employee finishes the task and moves on. An invested one goes beyond requirements. They question assumptions, refine solutions, and anticipate needs — because they recognize their work as part of a larger purpose.
This level of commitment is cultivated through meaning, recognition, and feedback loops that make progress visible. When people understand how their contributions influence results, work ceases to feel transactional and becomes personal.
When people are truly invested, they don’t just clock in and out. They bring resilience and creativity that no incentive program can replicate.
Keeping people interested
Interest is often misunderstood. We talk about motivation, engagement, and retention, but interest is what runs beneath them all. When people lose interest, they disengage in subtler ways. Ideas dry up. Energy fades. Initiative slows.
On the other hand, when people stay interested, they stay curious. They ask questions, explore new angles, and push beyond “how things are usually done.” That curiosity keeps organizations alive in fast-changing environments. Markets evolve, technology shifts, customer expectations rise; the teams that stay interested are the ones that adapt first.
Keeping people interested means creating space for growth, challenge, and exploration inside the work itself. When people feel like their role is a place to keep learning — not just repeating — they’re less likely to burn out and more likely to surprise you with what they can achieve.
The most resilient organizations are the ones that protect this spark of interest. Because when people remain curious, they’re not just working, they’re discovering. And that’s where the next breakthroughs often begin.
KPIs beyond the acronym
These KPIs are less about performance indicators and more about shaping the organizational culture, which in turn, is essential for the actual KPIs businesses care about. Numbers may reveal results, but culture determines whether those results are sustainable.
An organization where people feel informed is one where clarity replaces speculation. One where people are genuinely involved is one where ownership outlasts instruction. When people are invested, energy and accountability multiply. And when they remain interested, curiosity fuels adaptability and innovation. These aren’t abstract ideals — they are the conditions that make strategies executable and visions believable.
What’s powerful about this reframe is that it shifts the focus from chasing outcomes to cultivating the environment in which outcomes naturally emerge. You don’t have to push as hard when the culture itself is pulling people in the right direction. That is the quiet but decisive difference between organizations that struggle to maintain momentum and those that seem to move with it.
In practice, these KPIs show up in subtle but powerful ways:
- Information contextualized so people can act with confidence.
- Involvement shapes decisions in ways people can recognize.
- Investment grows naturally when contributions are tied to impact.
- Interest sustained through challenge and growth.
Final note
Dashboards will always matter. But numbers are the outcome, not the cause. The cause lies in whether people feel informed, involved, invested, and interested.
So the next time you’re reviewing KPIs in a meeting, pause for a moment. Ask yourself: are we measuring only performance, or are we also nurturing the culture that makes performance possible? Because in the long run, it’s these people-focused KPIs that quietly shape every chart, every metric, and every bottom line.
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