How Do You Measure Up?

Say you walk into a game mid-way, what's your first question? If you're like most of us, it's gonna be "what's the score?"

Well, the answers can come in various forms; someone could tell you simply which team is winning, or they could say the number of times the ball was saved, or simply 4-2.

Each measure has its uses. If all you knew was either your team (if you're the coach) won or lost, then all you could say is, "oh, then this is what we're gonna do in future".

However, if its half-time and you found out the number of passes that went stray, you could then re-position your players to prevent that from happening.

Hence, the main difference between the first and the second measure is that with the former, once you found out the outcome; there ain't nothing you can do about it, except to whine and witch-hunt. On a positive note, you'd think of what else we can do about it the next time. Such lag measures can be disastrous if it was the last game of the season and you need to win in order to emerge the champion. It is even more unthinkable in the school context as that would mean a cohort that we missed.

The latter are leading measures, which allow us to re-think what we can do in the interim. Its like I can look at my speedo to see how fast I'm doing without having to get a ticket before I know I've sped. In other words, leading indicators provide a useful function that tells us how we are doing along the way without having to journey through to know we are in the wrong place.

Apart from lead-and-lag indicators, there are another two series of indicators, namely activity-and-outcome indicators and cause-and-effect indicators. Briefly, these two series of indicators not only help us measure progress; they also enable us to drive the type of behaviors that are consistent and aligned to our organizational culture.

For instance, if we value creativity, then we ought to have measures that not only determine the number of creative projects (outcomes) but also the number of platforms we have to produce such projects (activities). Hence, measuring just outcomes or activities alone only provide us with an inaccurate perception of how our organisation is doing. And with inaccurate perception comes ineffective measures to address the issues at hand.

Likewise, with "cause-and-effect" measures, it tells us what we can do that has a direct (note, the "activities-and-outcomes" series constitute a sufficient but not necessary condition - you can still have creative projects (outcomes) without platforms if your people are really passionate about innovation) link between the two. For instance, number of individuals pursuing degree programs can be linked to number of graduates in the near future. You get the point.

Finally, all measures must of course be valid; in that they provide an accurate measure of the outcome. It must also be reliable; in the sense that if the measure can be easily manipulated, then you'd better have checks-and-measures in place to ensure the reliability of it. Then, there is the issue of scale and scope, where if you have been achieving a certain level of success, will it still be important to measure that?

You may judge by the number of times your child forgets to brush his teeth before going to bed, but would you do the same for your spouse?

Hence, it is important that we have a range of indicators that satisfy the above to tell us how we measure up.
Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)