Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [106]
2. To Guide Process Improvement Efforts
Another early opportunity to delve into the other three quadrants may come about when you are doing a process improvement effort. If you are using any of the currently in-vogue improvement methods (like Six Sigma) you will be asked to develop measures—not only to show that your efforts were successful, but also to help determine where improvement is needed. While these measures can be from the Service/Product Health quadrant, many times they are from a different area of the Answer Key.
And that's all right.
My admonitions against starting in any of the other three quadrants is based on my reluctance to have you “develop a program” in those quadrants before you're ready. If you are developing metrics to accompany a specific effort, you can definitely use measures from any quadrant.
3. To Accompany Organizational Development Efforts
If and when your organization embarks on organizational development efforts, it should include measures of success. These give clarity to the goals and allow those involved to know how well they are progressing toward the finish line.
As a strategy and planning consultant, I have worked on many organizational development teams. The latest included professional development and employee Integration teams. Each team wanted metrics to show progress and hopefully levels of success.
Say you're asked, “How do we know if we're successful?” Or, “How do we know when we're done?” Your answer will usually will be, “The metrics will tell us.”
These measures are dependent on the efforts involved. The efforts will normally determine the quadrant the metrics fall in. If you are doing employee professional development, you will find your metrics in the Organization Health quadrant. If your questions are around achievement of the strategic goals of the organization, you may be in the Future Health quadrant.
Again, the main difference between these and the Product/Service Health metrics I've covered is that these are metrics in response to specific root questions resulting from focused efforts. The scope of these metrics should be well defined. The Product/Service Health metrics I offer are the foundation for a long-term metrics program, not a measure of a specific effort.
These metrics, built around specific efforts, can still be “risky.” But, since they come “attached” to the specific effort, the risks of fear, uncertainty and doubt are much easier to mitigate.
Perhaps it would be more correct to consider these “other metrics” rather than advanced metrics. These are not more sophisticated than effectiveness metrics.
The Benefits Metrics Provide an Immature Organization
Before we look at metrics in the other quadrants, let's step back and look at the forest we're in. I've argued that metrics, as an organizational improvement tool, is not suited for an organization suffering from the inability to successfully take on enterprise-wide improvement efforts. (I offered an assessment in Why Organizations Struggle So Hard to Improve So Little for determining if your organization suffers from Organizational Immaturity.) I've held this position for a long time because of the dangers inherent in metrics and the risks involved. I've seen the fear rise up and poison an organization. Fear born of poorly defined and poorly implemented metrics.
While I still believe metrics to be one of the most (if not the most) risky of tools, I have gained a new appreciation for the value metrics can provide in moving an organization forward.
I'm not referring to changing behaviors through measurement. I find that to be the riskiest of uses for metrics. No, I mean through some little-known