The first thing one should understand about this book is that there are 220 pages of pictures, diagrams, and images in the PDF extract for the book out of 380 pages total. Visualization is a key dimension with respect to digesting the knowledge herein. That's good and bad. The good is that there's a lot of visuals to help one figure out the implementation of KPIs, the associated program/performance/portfolio management org that will support them, and the regular cadence that will bind those all together. The bad, is that a lot of graphics look like PowerPoint consulting fodder. I attempted to listen with pure audio, and it was very difficult to retain the information in a coherent manner, so audiobook listeners may have a rough time of this on their jog. That being said, once one does harmonize their listening/reading with the images, the material because easy to master (at least in "theory").
As stated, the book's subject is on the art of crafting and implementing KPIs in a large enterprise setting. The outline of the text is logical, starting with defining a KPI, and distinguishing it with other indicators/metrics that are also important to the enterprise, like key-risk indicators (KRIs), critical success factors (CSFs), general outcomes, as well as characterizing different types of measures, forward, current, backwards etc., and how/when those should be used/deployed, often in a "balanced scorecard" or some other similar semi-formalized dashboard/framework. Often times someone new to corporate America could find the jargon-ladden conversation confusing/disorientating, reading this book (and something like "Bulletproof Problem Solving") will help one cut through the noise and build a mental-model of what people are getting at in their meetings.
The real heart of the book though is less on the management theory that supposedly informs these notions, but on the implementation of them from a portfolio-management (or higher) perspective. Though the author makes pains to point out that a lot of this implementation should be done from in-house champions/experts/resources, a lot of what I read is pretty on-par with the methodology a strategy consultant may deploy on their client site, and hence, could be used as a manual for new hires to get a feel for what they have to look "forward to" once their off the bench.
The book spends a lot of time on the best practices of meeting/KPI/KRI cadence, and how/when each should be related, and what relationships these reports should have with respect to each other. There are probably at least half a dozen images of white boards with sticky notes on how one should organize group meetings to suss out collective intelligence. Confused yet, or seems abstract? Although fairly concrete in nature, if one has never done any of this before, it will seem totally random upon initial reading. Which is why, as with cooking, reading a book like this should be done at least twice. Once before the "preparation" (while you're on the bench say) and once after you've "burned the bird", and have gone through the exercise of standing up a performance management organization (also program/project management will be similar work but much more focused/"tactical").
Is any of this actually efficacious? To the point of the author, if you're a consultant, this is not a question of much concern, since' they'll be long gone before the program has probably reached it's first few milestones. Though, there's very little hard evidence provided by the author to validate what he's recommending, the book is definitely not want of material to use on projects, example scorecards, with appropriate icons, mind-maps, dashboard demos, as well as basic scripts for elevator pitches (cause you have to sell the idea before you can implement it). I can't fault the text on content.
Who is this book for? Anyone from a consultant to corporate middle-management. I can't see an executive going through this stuff. I'll have to read this a few more times to see if it jives with my experiences in the field, but otherwise, if one is tasked to do anything within the performance or portfolio management (possibly change management as well), this is probably not a bad resource to have to provide some fodder and ideas. Conditional recommend