Know whether the work is working without another dashboard nobody reads.

01The dashboard

We have a dashboard. Nobody opens it.

It took a quarter to build. It has forty charts, a filter for every region and a link in the team channel that nobody clicks. When the team needs to know whether something is working, someone exports a spreadsheet, or asks around, or waits for the engagement survey.

The dashboard shows what the data warehouse happens to hold, not what the team set out to change. Nobody owns any single chart, so nobody notices when one drifts. And with no goal on the page, every number can be read as fine.

A written measure turns a number into a commitment. It says which way is good, what good looks like, where the reading comes from and who looks at it. One measure the team believes beats forty it ignores.

02The distinction

A metric is a number. A measure is a number the team answers for.

The same figure can be either. Median time to first reply is a metric in a warehouse. It becomes a measure when the Support team writes it into its charter, sets a direction and a goal, names the source and starts reading it every week.

03Three principles

Watch fewer things, honestly.

1. 1

   Give every measure a direction and a goal.

   “Customer satisfaction” is a topic. “Median first reply under 4 hours, lower is better” is a measure. With a direction and a goal on the page, a reading means something on its own, and the team can say plainly whether it’s on track.

2. 2

   Name the source, or say it’s by hand.

   Every reading should say where it came from: a field in the help desk, a column in a sheet, or a person typing it in. A measure fed by hand is fine. A measure whose source nobody can name is a rumour.

3. 3

   Keep it small, and read it together.

   Three to five measures per team is plenty. Read them on a rhythm, in the open, and record what you decide when one goes off track. If nobody would act on a reading, retire the measure.

04In Particulars

Measures read on a rhythm, in the direction you chose.

Each measure lives on the charter with its direction and its source. Readings arrive from connected sources or by hand. Particulars shows the latest value, the change over 30 days and the rolling average, and says plainly when there isn’t enough data yet.

Illustrative team. The direction says what better means; the readings show which way it is going.

05What becomes possible

Know which work is working, and stop the rest.

When measures sit next to the roles and decisions that move them, a reading becomes a conversation with an owner. You can see which changes actually moved a number, which measures nobody acts on, and when a goal itself needs rethinking.

• Replace the survey question with a reading you can trust.
• Ask whether a decision moved the measure it was meant to.
• Retire the charts nobody would act on.

“If nobody would change anything when the number moves, it isn’t a measure.”

The Particulars thesis