How effective is your organization at using good measurement practices?
Our reader poll today asks: How effective is your organization at implementing good measurement practices?
- Very — we’re rigorous about the measurement methods we use: 8.1%
- Mostly — sometimes we’re not as effective as we could be: 35.6%
- Not very — we’re only disciplined when measuring major metrics: 34.1%
- Not at all — we’re terrible in our measurement practices: 22.3%
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. The next time the 56% of you who don’t measure things well are unhappy with how your organization is performing, please remember this poll. You can’t manage, let alone improve, things you don’t measure. Don’t go out and measure indiscriminately though. Clearly define the desired business outcome, identify the best measure of how you’re performing on activities related to that outcome, and stick to a focused set of metrics to track your progress. When you do measure, remember to answer the five key measurement questions:
- What’s the measurement’s purpose?
- What data source will you use?
- How will you calculate the metric?
- How frequently will you measure?
- Who will review the measure?
If you can answer these questions clearly, you should have a meaningful metric to monitor.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
Metrics are crazy important, yes.
Level up on metrics by tracking lead measures in addition to your goal (lag) measures. This is a 4DX principle. If you can identify the upstream metrics that are predictive of your end game, you can use those to do effective course corrections in the moment, rather than having to wait for the lag measures to tell you that you did or didn’t meet your targets.
Beautiful.
Great thoughts Mike. you are correct on the idea that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Also, yes , I agree with the poll results regarding how effective are organizations in implementing good measurement. Thank you for the valuable information!