Is there a common understanding of measurement or is it subjective?
Is measurement an art or science?
How long is a piece of string? The smart answer is that it is twice as long as half its length. Do we always need an accurate measurement before we embark on a new task, project or journey? Before your mind unravels here’s the long and short of it from some brilliant thought leaders.
Edward Denning is credited with revolutionary change in the field of quality improvement but his focus was predominantly on leadership, teamwork and continuous improvement. His 14 point plan for Total Quality Management avoids precise, accurate and rigorous measurement (which surprised me) even going so far as to recommend the elimination of numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.’ However measurement is implicit in his model.
Another management guru, Peter Drucker, once said “what gets measured gets managed”.
How can two influential thinkers have such diametrically opposed views?
On another track I spoke to someone recently in Fiji who said hot and cold is related to the gelling temperature of coconut oil (coconut oil gels between 22 – 25 degrees Celsius). The locals perceive cold being less than 22 degrees Celsius.
This started me thinking:- is there a common understanding of measurement?
I think one of the things that is missing in management measurement is the concept of time.
We often talk about project success (i.e. delivery to time, cost, quality and in some industries safety) but that doesn’t help the business unless the output from the project is used to deliver effective outcomes. Surely the most accurate measurement of project success is when the benefits are delivered for the good of the organisation but how many organisations measure benefits? Should we start talking about project success in relation to time so there is more transparency and more accuracy in our conversations and reports?
In some industries people are now talking about resilience but what is the unit of measurement of resilience? This seems to be a particularly hot topic in cyber security where organisations need to move from a position of good cyber security i.e. reactive to developing good cyber resilience i.e. proactive. But how do you measure this? Is your glass half full or half empty?
Another area that is changing is service level agreements. These used to be quite simple but we are moving from SLAs to XLAs but an XLA isn’t something that you can implement or carry out, it’s an approach you can take. What is the unit of measurement of success for an XLA? Likewise what is the unit of measurement for a business being Lean?
We talk about these things but how do we know whether we are better this year than we were last year? I would be very interested in any references that deal with this issue of time related measurement as, unless we can find a common vocabulary, we could continue talking at mixed purposes which may not be a good thing unless it results in field research in Fiji!
