September 10

What Gets Measured

You probably have a good sense of your organization’s goals. Many of these were probably handed down to you by your own manager (or your manager’s manager’s manager), and you have little say over them.

Any expectation that you set for yourself or your team should also have an accompanying metric that you use to determine whether the team is meeting that expectation. If there is no metric in place, then you have no way of knowing whether the team is performing according to plan.

This means that any cultural expectations you set—such as timeli- ness of meetings, how conflict is handled, or how decisions are made— need to have some sort of metric associated with them so that you can clearly communicate to the team how they are doing. You don’t need to communicate those metrics to your team members—they might just be for you—but they need to exist.

So is there any place where you’ve set an expectation that you’re not prepared to measure? If so, spend a bit of time today considering how you’ll know whether the team is living up to your expectations.

Every important effort you undergo should have a metric that helps you determine its success.

QUESTION

is there any work you’re doing that lacks a clear metric?