Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [36]
This promise takes some diligence on your part. You have to remember your promises—which can be tricky when you get a very innocent request for information. You have to make sure it’s within the agreement you made with the data provider.
The most common and simple agreement I make is to not provide data to others without the source’s permission. If you provide the data, it’s your data. You should get to decide who sees it.
This should be captured in the development plan under “How it won’t be used.” Probably the major reason to put the plan in writing is that documented agreements allow you to keep your word with less difficulty.
Defining how the metrics won’t be used helps prevent fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Identify Who Will Want to Use the Metrics
While you may believe you are the only customer who wants to view or use the metric, chances are there are many customers of your metrics. A simple test is to list all of the people you plan on sharing your information with. This list will probably include your boss, your workers, and those who use your service.
Anyone who will use your metric is a customer of it. You should only show it to customers.
Everyone that you plan to share your metrics with becomes a customer of that metric. If they are not customers, then there is no reason to share the information with them. You may be a proponent of openness and want to post your metrics on a public web site, but the information doesn’t belong to you. It is the property of those providing the data. It is not public information; it was designed to help the organization answer a root question. Why share it with the world? And today we know that if you share it publicly, it’s in the public domain forever.
The provider of the data should be the primary metric customer.
The possible customers are as follows:
Those who provide the data that goes into creating the metric.
Those who you choose to share your metrics with.
Those who ask you for the metric and can clearly explain how they will use the metric.
It is important to clearly identify the customers of your metrics because they will have a say in how you present the metric, its validity, and how it will be used. If you are to keep to the promise of how it will and won’t be used, you have to know who will use it and who won’t.
These customers should be documented in your development plan, with a note on the type of customer they are. Are they providing the data? Are they the front-line supervisors? Are they executive management? The type of customer will help define what level of information they receive and the communications necessary around the metric’s use.
Who will and won’t use the metric is as important as how it will and won’t be used.
Before I go to the next component, let’s take a sanity check. I know quite well that sometimes you can’t tell your boss “no.” I know that your boss may be demanding data, measures, or information and may not be sympathetic to your need for assurances that he won’t misuse or abuse the information you provide. If I believe the accounts of numerous authors, coworkers, and friends—bad managers far outnumber good ones.
I am not advocating that you fall on your sword over an innocuous information request. I am promoting that, depending on your position in the organization, that if you are put in the unenviable position as a middle person between a “bad” manager and the workers—do everything you can within your power to ensure that the information you provide is not misused.
Schedule for Reporting, Analyzing, and Collecting
The gathering of the data, measures, and information you will use to build the