Metrics and reporting

If you've got people working for you, what are your expectations of them? How do you rate their abilities? How do you measure their performance? If someone needs a talking to, what evidence do you have? If someone is doing fantastically well, would you notice?

There's this idea that if you don't measure it you can't improve it. Well, I don't believe that. But if you do measure it, and you're careful about how you measure it, you can prove that you're improving it. Or more importantly, you can prove if it's not getting better and you need to change course.

Publishing a scorecard every month is a great way of letting everyone in your organisation know where we're doing well and where we need to improve. Make sure that everyone understands how the scores are calculated, so they can take action themselves to remedy the areas that need improvement. And suddenly, your job has become a whole load easier.

Take action: Design a system to track what's important.