Be Careful What You Measure (Client Centric Part 3)

I hated getting on the scales in high school. I weighed 145 pounds soaking wet my senior year. It was embarrassing to appear skinny in the football program, so when asked my weight, I pushed it up a few pounds, anticipating weight gain from all the food I was consuming.

The opposite is now the case. I like to round the numbers down, try to eat less, and look thinner. Scale aside, we tend to measure what we want. We don’t typically measure what is the most critical. Oftentimes, seeing critical results that could change our course seems too painful and like it forces our hand.

Measuring for Outcomes

When we measure the right things, we get the right outcomes. This focus takes great thinking and great discipline. If the high school football program had measured the weight lifted in the bench press I could have done something about that number. But gaining weight was outside of my control as long as I was playing football.

KLAS enjoys hearing about the many programs and measurements that are put into place to improve a vendor’s performance. It is most rewarding to recognize those measurements that actually result in the success desired. Those measurements are likely the toughest to uncover and require the most discipline to record. The good news is that the outcomes are better by a significantly large margin. If you are aware of best practice measurements, pass them along and we’ll see if we can share them.