Comments on: Measures, Metrics, Mess

By: amnon

amnon — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:57:47 +0000

Totally agree with Shlomit’s comment. One of the great fallacies of “quantitative” management. Supposedly, the saying “you get what you measure” implies “you get what you wanted”. More often it means you get what people will do to make you think they are doing what you want from them.

By: Fabian Szulanski

Fabian Szulanski — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:29:17 +0000

I will stick with happiness: If all the value network of the organization is delighted while in, and out of the innovation process, it could be a nice “attractor” for measuring success. Each node of the network might define in advance their own happiness factors, and share them in a common forum. For some, happiness could be within the process (input), for others it could be in the throughput. That would define the variety of indicators. And all the valuenet would feel they own the metrics so there would not exist a feeling of being imposed other people’s indicators. Dont worry, be happy =)

By: Shlomit Tassa

Shlomit Tassa — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:29:06 +0000

This is indeed a key challenge to any large-scale innovation initiative. Another point against measuring too much at first is that what you measure tends to influence what you will produce. Essentially, once the metrics are known, people will try to meet the metrics, and sometimes _only_ the metrics, at the expense of other goals.