Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [32]
The metric development plan provides a game plan for making metrics well-defined, useful, and manageable. At a minimum, it should include the following:
A purpose statement
An explanation of how it will be used
An explanation of how it won’t be used
A list of the customers of the metrics
Schedules
Analysis
Visuals or “a picture for the rest of us”
A narrative
The plan not only helps in the creation of the metric, but it also provides guidance for the maintenance and final disposition.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth planning to do it right.
The Purpose Statement
Is the purpose statement the same as your root question? The answer is, “maybe.” You will document the purpose statement in your Development Plan when you identify the root question as shown in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1. Purpose Statement
If you have a well-formed root question and you have dug as deep as you can, your root question may very well contain the purpose statement. Consider the following example:
Root Question: “How well are we providing customer support using online chat?”
Purpose Statement: “To ensure that we are providing world-class customer support using online chat.”
Not much of a distinction between the two. It does provide a clearer requirement. It gives the underlying reasons for the question, and therefore the metric. The purpose of the metric is usually larger than providing insights or an answer to your root question. There is usually a central purpose to the question being asked. This purpose allows you to pull more than one metric together under an overarching requirement.
Let’s take my example of customer support through chat. If we kept asking “why,” we may find that there is an underlying need to improve overall customer service/support to the point that the customer support team is a key component to the overall organization’s success. The requirement is to make the customer support a selling point to customers. It should be one of the reasons the customer becomes a loyal, repeat promoter of the organization.
This underlying purpose will give us a much clearer guide for the metric. It will also allow us to identify other metrics needed, if you are ready to do so. You may have to settle for working with the question you currently have and get to the bigger-picture needs in the future. But it’s always best to have the big picture—it allows you to keep the end in mind while working on parts of the picture.
I’ve been working lately with numerous clients in another area of organizational development that I find extremely rewarding—vision setting. Much like the work we did to identify the root question, vision setting requires getting to the underlying need or want. In vision setting, I do not advocate a wordy statement. When we write a statement, we often tend to use flowery, multi-syllabic words to describe something that should be extremely simple. Your purpose statement should not be crafted for beauty—you’re not going to frame it. It should be edited for clarity. Remember to define every word and clause in the statement.
Your root question is the foundation of the metric and the purpose statement. If you’ve identified a good root question, the question and your purpose may be one and the same.
When documenting the metric development plan, I make a point to capture both the root question and the purpose. If they are synonymous, no harm is done. If they are not, then I gain more insight into what the metric is really all about.
Allow me to give you an actual example. The executive director of a center for women and I were working on a possible metric and our conversation went as follows:
“I want to know how many women