Metrics Perpetuate Distrust

Guest post from Dan Greenberg

“We need to define success.”

Have you heard that one? It happens all the time at bureaucratic corporate organizations who love creating measuring sticks to help them figure out whether everything is okay or not. Before beginning anything, corporate junkies always insist we define what a successful outcome will look like.

I take issue with this. First off, life is far more complex than a black-and-white this worked or it didn’t outcome. I propose something else entirely:

• Start doing some project
• At regular intervals, get everyone involved with the project (working on it, has some interest in it being successful, cares about it, etc.) into a room together and ask them all “is this project going well?” or “could anything be improved?” (This group of people includes all customers by the way.)
• For those who think it’s not going well or that it could be improved, ask them what they think is going wrong or what they think could be improved
• Write all these “what-is-going-wrong” or “what-could-be-improved” items onto sticky notes and put them on a wall, group similar items, then go through the board as a group and talk about them
• Come up with some ideas for improvement, go forth, and continue the project or end the project if the room thinks there’s no reason to continue

Too simple of an approach for your organization?

My issue with an “is-this-working” metric is that if the metric doesn’t match what someone says, the boss believes the metric and not the individual. This indicates distrust. Show me a metric that matches what you are saying or else I won’t believe you. When did we stop trusting one another?