[bryanrasmussen]

I would think KPIs are useful at mid level and higher, once you have more people than you can have in depth conversations with within maybe the span of 3 days you need to set organizational and group goals that are simple enough that people can follow without talking to you.

on edit: or maybe a more clear rule is when you have managers between you and other employees, the KPIs tell you how things are going but also tell the managers how you will interpret how things are going, and give them easy numbers they can use to tell the people they supervise how things are going. Of course they are only useful if people can communicate back why they think the KPIs are faulty and if those communications will be listened to - which places I've worked at that used KPIs, this was not something one could do.