Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [22]
Test 5. Can you draw a picture using it? When you design the metric, you will do it much more as an art than a science. There are lots of courses you can take on statistical analysis. You can perform exciting and fun analysis using complex mathematical tools. But, I’m not covering that here. We’re talking about how to develop a useable metrics program—a tool for improvement. If you can’t draw a picture as the answer for the question, it may not be a root question.
Not all root questions will pass these tests.
I’m not saying that all root questions must pass these tests. But, all root questions that require a “metric” to answer them must. If your question doesn’t pass these tests, you have some choices.
Develop the answer without using data, measures, information, or metrics. Sometimes the answer is a process change. Sometimes the answer is to stop doing something, do it differently, or start doing something new. It doesn’t have to result in measuring at all.
Develop the answer using measures (or even just data). This may be a one-time measure. You may not need to collect or report the data more than once.
Work on the question until it passes the five tests—so you can then develop a metric. Why would you want to rework your question simply to get to a metric? You shouldn’t. If you feel confident about the result, stop. If the client says you’ve hit upon the root question, stop. If the question resonates fully, stop. Wherever you are, that’s where you’ll be. Work from there. Don’t force a metric if it’s not required.
Your task is not to develop a metric—it’s to determine the root question and provide an answer.
Developing a Metric
It’s an interesting argument: is the process of designing metrics a science or an art? If you read statistics textbooks, you might take the side of science. If you read Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success by Dean Spitzer (AMACON, 2007), or How To Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard (Wiley, 2010), you might argue that it’s an art. I propose, like most things in real life (vs. theory), it’s a mixture of both.
One place it’s more art than science is in the design of a metric. I can say this without reservation because to design our metric, you want to actually draw a picture. It’s not fine art. It’s more like the party game where you’re given a word or phrase and you have to draw a picture so your teammates are able to guess what the clue is.
At the first seminar I taught on designing metrics, “Do-It-Yourself Metrics”, I broke the students into groups of four or five. After stepping through the exercise for identifying root questions, I told them to draw a picture to provide an answer to a question. The question was, “How do we divide our team’s workload to be the most productive?” Figure 2-1 shows the best of the students’ answers.
Figure 2-1. Workload division metric
This picture shows how each person (represented by a different cup) has different levels of work. The level of the liquid represents the amount of work “in each person’s cup.” The line near the top is the highest level the liquid should be poured to, because the froth will cause it to overflow. This line represents the most each person can actually handle, leaving room at the top for the “extra”—like illness, lunch, vacation, etc. By looking at the picture, the manager gets an easy-to-understand story of who has too much work, who can take on more, who is more productive, and who needs to improve their skill sets so that they can eventually have a larger cup.
A useful part of drawing the picture was clarity around the question. To ensure that we drew it right, we needed to also define the terms we were using in the picture: productivity, workload, and team.
Define the terms—even the ones that are obvious. Here too, clarity is paramount.
We found out that