• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In the fifth (and any consecutive) tier, we find mostly information and measures. If we find our root question residing here, the question is probably very tactical and may not require a full-blown metric to answer. Remembering the Metric Development Plan, you should flesh out the metric by identifying not only the information and measures, but also document the individual data points needed.

Conclusion

The reason the Answer Key leads off the practical part of the book is that it is a great shortcut tool for you to implement metrics. It helps you put your root question into a context of organizational health. If you are forced to work without a root question, it can be used to ensure you are not trying to blend together incongruous measures, as well as help you to work toward a driving need.

Working from the left, moving right, you go from the high-level to the tactical. It will help you identify possible information and measures you can use to answer your root question.

Working from right to left, you can work from specific measures (or even data) back toward a driving need. Working in this direction will also help you to ensure that your metrics are logically grouped and organized. You normally don’t want information from different areas (product/service, process, organizational, or future health) mixed together into one metric, as they would rarely answer any question, unless it is at the highest or left-most levels of the Answer Key.

Remember that the Answer Key, while a useful shortcut, is still only a tool for helping you develop your metrics. It’s not the whole answer and it doesn’t relieve you of the need to follow the model for developing metrics.

Start with Effectiveness

The first chief information officer I worked for used to say, “do the right thing.” Besides the philosophical and religious interpretations of this directive, there are also the leader’s simple day-to-day behavioral expectations of her workforce. Effectiveness metrics will allow you to determine if you are “doing the right things.”

I am doing more than suggest that you start with effectiveness. In Chapter 5, I introduced the Answer Key. I discussed the components of effectiveness metrics, the first quadrant of tier three, Product and Service Health. I’m recommending that you not only start here, but that you remain in this area of the Answer Key until your organization has matured to a point of readiness for dealing with the other quadrants.

As described in my first book on overcoming organizational immaturity, an organization may be simply incapable of dealing with a full-blown metrics program. Using metrics is an advanced behavior.

Let’s look at the reasons I propose you should start (and remain) in the effectiveness quadrant for the foreseeable future. The reasons can be discussed one quadrant at a time, starting with quadrant 4, Future Health.

Let’s look at the Answer Key again in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1. The Answer Key

Future Health

The fourth quadrant of tier three (Figure 6-2) covers Future Health or the organization’s health from the view point of leadership. Before you start working on a metrics program covering the Future Health area, it would be best if your organization were ready for it.

Figure 6-2. The Answer Key, Quadrant 4

The following are some questions you can ask yourself or others to determine if your organization is ready for metrics in this area:

Do you have a mission statement? Most organizations do these days.

If you ask five workers what the mission of the organization is, will you get the same correct answer?

Do you have a living strategic plan? If yes, how far out is the furthest goal? Most process improvement experts will tell you that a strategic goal should be three to five years out at a minimum. They can stretch out to ten years.

Does your organization have the majority of its goals documented?

If you have long-range goals, are they being actively worked? (I won’t ask if you know how well they are progressing, since that would require measures which lead to metrics.)

Have the organizational