What is YOUR Personal NPS?

I got in today and thought I would have a look at LinkedIn, mainly as I could see I had 4 new messages, oh the excitement..  To my surprise (and I confess disappointment) they were all requests from former colleagues for an endorsement or recommendation for when I worked with them.  Not that I have any problem whatsoever doing this as I have done the same but it got me thinking....If NPS is a simple measure of loyalty then one could start applying it to one’s self in a business context; You might want to use it for your private life but if you do you really need to get out more. 

Therefore would you recommend another individual (score 9/10) or are you simply passive (score 7-8), there may be occasions where you may detract from a person but in my business experience I can only think of two people I have met who would fall into this category.  The usual follow up question of “why did you score this way” could lead to some real personal development opportunities – although one may find this a tad embarrassing.

With the prevalence of social media and mobile devices, one could score individuals anonymously and immediately.  Indeed if you have a look at the technology being offered by SurveySwipe where you can NPS things (and people) via a multitude of mobile devices (the image of the i phone is theirs).  No doubt one could have an immediate dashboard of people’s scores.  Indeed, I noticed the concept of NPS for individuals when I had a meeting with the guys at CustomerGauge, where in their follow up communication they included a link to rate them.  I have no idea if this is linked to performance management within their organisation but it would be a simple and effective measure?

As for Linked in endorsements it got me thinking if one could come up with a simple, measurable and reliable way of calculating Personal NPS.  So here is my starter for 10...

What is Your Personal NPS?



Therefore your NPS is calculated by taking the total requests that you have asked people for endorsements (You can see this by looking at Profile >>Recommendations>>Received Recommendations.  You then add on the pending requests to the recommendations and calculating the percentage of Endorsements you have received (You can see this by looking at Profile >>Recommendations>>Received Recommendations). 

Reciprocal endorsements are those ones where you have also provided an endorsement for someone and they have for you –the “I scratch your back...” approach.  The percentage here is expressed as a percentage of total endorsements you received.  Therefore to get to your personal NPS, simply deduct one from the other.

A Simple Worked Example

Fred has requested 38 former collegues via linked In for an endorsement (n=38), but hereceived back 21 endorsements from his former colleagues (55% of n).  However, Fred reciprocated endorsements for 7 of these people (33% of total endorsements). Using this example Freds Personal NPS is calculated 55% less 33%

Freds Personal NPS is 22%

Some Thoughts

So whilst this might seem like a bit of fun, imagine if recruiters started to use this as part of their selection process?  One could argue that they already do this when looking at linked in anyhow.  One could also use it as a basis for personal development and improvement.  I guess the real ouestion is what is Your personal NPS - you can tweet it to me on @davidjoconnor or hash tag it #personalnps.  I could plot the results....in the next blog