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Why did you sell out?

How many requests did you have that you couldn’t satisfy?

How did you market the program?

“I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t see how any of that would make a difference.”

“I’ll give you a simple scenario. What if I told you that you sold half of your tickets in one day? A week before your deadline, you sold all the tickets you had left, all in one day.”

He stopped and thought a bit.

“Half?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. I might have to know why we sold so many in such a short span of time.”

“Good. And if I told you that they were all sold by one person?”

“Wow! I’d have to give that person a big thank-you card. Perhaps we could give them an award?”

I gave him a look that only a parent or principal could understand.

“I’m jumping to conclusions again?” he offered.

I nodded.

“I guess I’d want to know how that happened.”

“Good. Let’s say you find out that someone, an anonymous donor knew that you had only sold half of your goal after two-and-a-half months into your program. Let’s say that the donor decided to help you out by buying all of your remaining coupon books.”

“What did they do with all of them? That’s a lot of books! Wait, I should care, right? I mean that’s important, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I’m glad you want to know. That means you’re not jumping to conclusions and you’re starting to think of the measures properly. They should be something that you use to help you think. Good job.”

He smiled.

“The donor gave them away to people like a secret Santa. He just gave them out like candy. Now, what’s more important though is—what if you double your order next year?”

“Well…I guess if the donor doesn’t decide to bail us out, especially since we could have three times as many coupon books left at the same time in the program… Oww. It could be a catastrophe.”

Now I smiled. “So, let’s talk about your real information needs, what you really want to know, and we can build a metric if need be.”

Designing metrics, like almost every organizational development activity involves much more than the actual task. You get a lot more out of the effort to design a metric then just the metric. And sometimes you don’t end up with the expected result (a metric) at all, but you always end up with something useful.

Planning a Good Metric

Where to Begin

In Why Organizations Struggle So Hard to Improve So Little, my coauthors and I addressed the need for structure and rigor in documenting work with metrics. More than any other organizational development effort, metrics require meticulous care. Excellent attention to detail is needed—not only in the information you use within the metric (remember the risks of human involvement), but also with the process involved.

In this chapter, we’ll cover identifying the many possible components of a metric development plan and documenting the metric development plan so that it becomes a tool for not only the creation of the metric, but a tool for using it effectively.

The Metric Development Plan

We already discussed the building blocks of the metric. If we envision metrics as a house, the root question can logically signify the foundation of the structure. Without a solid foundation, the house may not last (ask the Three Pigs). Of course, if the structure isn’t intended to be a long-term home, then the foundation becomes much less important. We also discussed the load-bearing wall (metric), the two-by-fours (information), the drywall (measures), and the nails (data). We haven’t yet discussed the various other items that go into building a house or the components that go into turning a structure into a home.

While a metric is designed to answer a root question, and uses information, measures, and data to give it substance, metrics also require other components to make it a useful tool. These components are included in a metric development plan.

The Components of a Metric Development Plan

A metric development plan captures all of the components of the metric—data, measures, information, pictures, and of course, the root question. The plan also documents