There is an old story about a man walking through the woods and marveling at the expert marksmanship around him. Every tree has a target with an arrow right through the bulls-eye. He reaches a frail old man sitting on a rock. The old man is holding a rickety old bow and can barely stand as he greets the visitor. The man asks, “You wouldn’t happen to be the one responsible for the excellent display of marksmanship throughout the forest?” The old man replies, “Yes, I sure am.” “Well then” continues the man, “I am quite wealthy and would be willing to pay you handsomely if you could teach me to shoot like that.” The old man looks at his new friend and says, “I’ll teach you for free. It’s really quite simple. First, you shoot the arrow. Then, you draw the circles.”
Most people chuckle at the old man’s clever but outrageous strategy. Yet, it is exactly how many people develop measurement strategies. They begin an initiative or an intervention and, at some point, decide that it is time to measure its success. Typically they’ll look back at their actions and try to craft some type of measures around them. In the end, they wind up just like the old 7man in the story – drawing circles after they shoot. It’s not surprising to find so many programs that provide little value despite metrics that are “off the chart.”
Figuring out what to measure is actually quite simple if done right. Your measurement should be a reflection of the original problem that you set out to solve. If your initiative is targeted at improving customer service, then your measure should be improvement in customer service. This sounds obvious but for some reason it very rarely happens in practice.
Too often projects are initiated without clear outcomes or goals. I once had a boss who told me to “redesign” my entire department. I asked what they newly designed department needed to do or deliver that the current department didn’t. He couldn’t answer. I never redesigned the department. Without knowing what I was to achieve, I couldn’t possibly make any decisions on how to achieve it and certainly couldn’t measure whether I succeeded. My boss didn’t know what he wanted. Yet somehow he was going to try to hold me accountable for delivering it. Had I listen to him, I would have found myself drawing lots of circles on trees hoping to find one that he liked.
If you find yourself midway through a project and hear someone ask, “So, how do we measure this?” stop immediately. That’s a sign that you are missing clarity in what you are trying to accomplish. Don’t draw your circles after the fact. Make sure that everyone understands the problem that you are trying to solve. Then make sure that your actions and your measures are aligned around that problem.
