Don't measure it, just manage it.

Year by year (and I have been working 10 years) there has been a drive to control everything. The "If you can't measure it you can't manage it" mantra is a religion that ought never to be questioned.

Well here is a question:

What if measuring becomes the primary activity of a company?

Let's measure the measuring to begin with.

First of all start with the hypothesis that measuring adds no productive value whatsoever and that this hypothesis is true for every type of measurement unless individually proven otherwise.

Secondly, once you introduce measuring, all the people affected by it will engage 100% with working the system to ensure the measure reflects well upon them.

Let's not forget that other activities will suffer because resources will be spent on measuring that could have been used on the core activities of the companies. So you will certainly need more staff.

My final point about measuring is that it is historical. Now of course there is a value in experience gained over time etc. It's good to know your turnover and profits over the years etc., but for any company the most important thing is to look forward. You can't change the past but only build for the future. Measuring distracts from looking forward. Right now, it doesn't matter that last month there was a complete denial of service for 5 days for all customers. What does matter is to know there was/is a problem, try and understand the cause and have a clear idea that THIS is what we are going to do about it right now.

I say to hell with measuring altogether. Focus on what the situation is NOW. Focus on what needs to be done/achieved:

• Now
• In one week
• In one month
• In one year
• In five years
• In ten years

My cable provider is absolutely a disaster (It's Coditel). Every couple of months I loose most of my channels and have to perform gymnastics to get the issue resolved. From my point of view, I hate fucking Coditel. As far as I am concerned, the sooner they go out of business the better and as soon as I have a choice (within a couple of months) I am going to another provider. I will never buy anything else from them. They can forget about me ever using them for broadband or telephony. That a customer should hate your company is a tragedy.

Now if you were Coditel and were to measure (as I am sure they do) network issues, your measurement might say that 97% of subscribers had a perfect service in a particular month. That sounds pretty good. But it isn't. Why should anyone have a denial of service ever?
However an alternative approach is to say we should never have any denial of service to any customer. Denial of service to even one customer should be seen as a disaster. The minute there is one, Coditel should focus on the cause and ensure that it fixed for good and do whatever it takes to ensure that this never happens again. With this approach, over time your company improves tangibly.

Management is about making decisions. A good Manager makes decisions. Sadly most Managers seem to be afraid to make decisions. You can make good decisions without measuring.