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Added for You - What to do with your Ugly Measures!
IntroductionThe state of Gujarat in India, popularly known as the ‘Manchester Of the East’, has a rich heritage of textile crafts. The arid region of Kutchh is the richest in the state in terms of cultural heritage. However, there are several other parts of the state which specialize in some form of textile craft or the other. In this article, we have outlined some of the traditional textile crafts of this beautiful state and have attempted to analyze the scope of these crafts.BandhniThe craft of ‘Tie & Dye’, typically known as ‘Bandhni’ or ‘Bandhej’ in Gujarat is practiced in several areas of the state. The term ‘Bandhni’ is derived from the Hindi word ‘Bandhan’, this means ‘tying’. Bandhni from Jamnagar, Anjar and Bhuj are particularly renowned. The Bandhnis from these areas differ from those of other regions in terms of designs and craftsmanship. In Jamnagar, Bandhni work is done on a special type of silky material. Initially, Bandhni work was done only on sarees. Later on, Bandhni salwar kameezes began to be produced. Nowadays, there are many items available in Bandhni, ranging from blouses and scarves to bedsheets and ties. Usually, Bandhn
Some measures are ugly because they are really just data collection processes pretending to be measures:
"Customer Survey"
"Occupational Health and Safety incident reports"
"Budget"
These two so-called measures are data collection processes, and not the information that answers our questions. The measures can certainly come from the data these processes collect, but usually the measures need to be very clearly designed and defined before the right data can be collected.
Do you have any data collection processes that collect lots of the wrong kinds of data? Try to write down the business questions that you really need this data collection process to answer, and work backwards to identify the form the answers should take, the analysis that can produce these answers, and the data that this analysis would require. Thus, you will know better what your measures are (and what data should be collected to produce them).
MEASURES THAT ARE COMPLEX INDICES
Many people still stand firm on the notion that indexes are a great way to simplify performance meas
When you consider all the many types of animation that are being used for advertising these days clay animation is the one that people seem to enjoy the most. It is the kind of creative stuff that people remember long after they have seen it. In the world of advertising where the general idea is to get people to remember the product you are advertising, clay animation can be a goldmine.We all remember the California Raisins advertising campaign in the eighties where a lovable bunch of clay animated raisins danced their way into the hearts of Americans nationwide. The California raisin industry had been in a slump for some time until they decided to use clay animation with an aggressive advertising campaign that included a series of television commercials featuring a group of raisins dancing to the Marvin Gay hit I Heard it Through the Grapevine. These commercials just had a certain look to them that can only be classified as eye candy. The colorful, three dimensional clay figures and the way they moved on the television screen created a unique look that had people glued to their seats during these spots. They were an instant hit and they brought the Califor
INTRODUCTION
Winning awards, completing projects and initiatives on time, meeting budget, counting widgets, annual surveys, and whatever we can find at the back of the 'performance measure pantry' that was left over from last year - they are all ugly measures! If you're stuck with this sort of thing, here are some ideas for what to do about it.
WHAT MAKES A MEASURE UGLY?
In a nutshell, measures are ugly when they fail to inform your decisions about whether or not you're getting the results you wanted, and how well your actions are doing in making those results happen. Measures are ugly when they fail to give you the feedback you need to have more control or influence over the results you most passionately want, or need, to create.
Too often, people treat measurement as a bureaucratic jumping-through-the-hoops-of-the-planning-process activity. They come up with anything that can be written down in the KPI column of the business or project plan that can escape challenge from superiors or peers. The end product is a pool of measures that are usually the easiest, cheapest, most rudimentary information to produce. But they pay a price: such measures don't give the right kind of feedback to inform the proper management of that which they monitor.
DO YOU HAVE ANY UGLY MEASURES?
Quite specifically, there are a few criteria that any measure must meet if it's going to have any chance at becoming valuable feedback for decision-making. And of course, ugly measures violate these criteria. The rest of this article discusses six of the most common conditions of measure ugliness, and offers ideas for how to overcome them:
- measures that are events or milestones or very infrequently calculated
- measures that monitor the 'means', not the 'end'
- measures that are actually data, not information
- measures that are complex indices
- measures that encourage the wrong behaviour
- measures that are overly aggregated
MEASURES THAT ARE EVENTS OR MILESTONES OR VERY INFREQUENTLY CALCULATED
Measures like the following are ugly, principally because they offer little, if any, regular feedback through time:
"Annual customer satisfaction rating."
"Win Banksia Award for environmental achievement in 2006."
"On-time project completion."
Unless you design measures that give you regular feedback through time, you'll be faced with 'too little, too late". You won't get the information that will help you finetune your strategies (activities, initiatives, projects, etc…) to ensure they actually do produce the results they were supposed to.
The trap you can fall into here is assuming that your strategies will unquestionably work. Instead, work out what results you'd expect to see from these strategies, and explore how you could collect some evidence of this on a weekly or monthly basis. No, it won't always be feasible or possible for everything. But it will be for a lot of things.
MEASURES THAT MONITOR THE 'MEANS', NOT THE 'END'
Another common type of ugly measure is information about the means, not the end, not the performance result or outcome that the strategy was chosen for in the first place.
"Implement organisational restructure by June 2008." as a measure for a goal to improve customer loyalty
"Staff Productivity" as a measure for a goal to reduce organisational costs
"Billing Accuracy" as a measure for a goal to increase payment of invoices before the due date
Can you have an organisational restructure and not improve customer loyalty? Of course! Can you improve customer loyalty without an organisational restructure? Of course! So while implementing an organisational restructure might be one of the strategies you choose toward improving customer loyalty, it is not evidence of customer loyalty. The same logic also applies to the measure of staff productivity posing as evidence of organisational cost reduction.
Direct evidence of the result is essential to properly test our hypotheses about how to achieve that result. If you have measures that track the means and not the end, then you probably need a dialogue to fully describe what the end looks like, and design measures that are evidence of this. MEASURES THAT ARE ACTUALLY DATA, NOT INFORMATION
Some measures are ugly because they are really just data collection processes pretending to be measures:
"Customer Survey"
"Occupational Health and Safety incident reports"
"Budget"
These two so-called measures are data collection processes, and not the information that answers our questions. The measures can certainly come from the data these processes collect, but usually the measures need to be very clearly designed and defined before the right data can be collected.
Do you have any data collection processes that collect lots of the wrong kinds of data? Try to write down the business questions that you really need this data collection process to answer, and work backwards to identify the form the answers should take, the analysis that can produce these answers, and the data that this analysis would require. Thus, you will know better what your measures are (and what data should be collected to produce them).
MEASURES THAT ARE COMPLEX INDICES
Many people still stand firm on the notion that indexes are a great way to simplify performance measu
Recently, I needed to get a brand new clothes dryer repaired that refused to generate hot air.I phoned the warranty folks and they told me, because it was Christmas time, I’d have to wait about a week and a half before I could dry my clothes.When the guy arrived, he scoped out the machine and said I bought the wrong model, they’ve had a lot of trouble with that one, and if I begged the manufacturer, it might replace the unit, altogether.I told him that wasn't what I needed. I'd settle for some dry clothes, today.“Oh, well it seems you need some parts. I’ll order them and let’s set another appointment a week and a half from now."“What? You came out here a week late with no parts on the truck?”“We can’t be expected to stock EVERYTHING on our trucks, you know!”That is just the kind of baloney, if it goes unchallenged, that keeps people from getting the repairs they need.At first, it sounds logical.Customers are hypnotized into thinking, “Trucks are only so large, and these service people must repair a dozen different appliances, so gee, golly, gosh I must be asking a lot to expect them to be able to start
DO YOU HAVE ANY UGLY MEASURES?
Quite specifically, there are a few criteria that any measure must meet if it's going to have any chance at becoming valuable feedback for decision-making. And of course, ugly measures violate these criteria. The rest of this article discusses six of the most common conditions of measure ugliness, and offers ideas for how to overcome them:
- measures that are events or milestones or very infrequently calculated
- measures that monitor the 'means', not the 'end'
- measures that are actually data, not information
- measures that are complex indices
- measures that encourage the wrong behaviour
- measures that are overly aggregated
MEASURES THAT ARE EVENTS OR MILESTONES OR VERY INFREQUENTLY CALCULATED
Measures like the following are ugly, principally because they offer little, if any, regular feedback through time:
"Annual customer satisfaction rating."
"Win Banksia Award for environmental achievement in 2006."
"On-time project completion."
Unless you design measures that give you regular feedback through time, you'll be faced with 'too little, too late". You won't get the information that will help you finetune your strategies (activities, initiatives, projects, etc…) to ensure they actually do produce the results they were supposed to.
The trap you can fall into here is assuming that your strategies will unquestionably work. Instead, work out what results you'd expect to see from these strategies, and explore how you could collect some evidence of this on a weekly or monthly basis. No, it won't always be feasible or possible for everything. But it will be for a lot of things.
MEASURES THAT MONITOR THE 'MEANS', NOT THE 'END'
Another common type of ugly measure is information about the means, not the end, not the performance result or outcome that the strategy was chosen for in the first place.
"Implement organisational restructure by June 2008." as a measure for a goal to improve customer loyalty
"Staff Productivity" as a measure for a goal to reduce organisational costs
"Billing Accuracy" as a measure for a goal to increase payment of invoices before the due date
Can you have an organisational restructure and not improve customer loyalty? Of course! Can you improve customer loyalty without an organisational restructure? Of course! So while implementing an organisational restructure might be one of the strategies you choose toward improving customer loyalty, it is not evidence of customer loyalty. The same logic also applies to the measure of staff productivity posing as evidence of organisational cost reduction.
Direct evidence of the result is essential to properly test our hypotheses about how to achieve that result. If you have measures that track the means and not the end, then you probably need a dialogue to fully describe what the end looks like, and design measures that are evidence of this. MEASURES THAT ARE ACTUALLY DATA, NOT INFORMATION
Some measures are ugly because they are really just data collection processes pretending to be measures:
"Customer Survey"
"Occupational Health and Safety incident reports"
"Budget"
These two so-called measures are data collection processes, and not the information that answers our questions. The measures can certainly come from the data these processes collect, but usually the measures need to be very clearly designed and defined before the right data can be collected.
Do you have any data collection processes that collect lots of the wrong kinds of data? Try to write down the business questions that you really need this data collection process to answer, and work backwards to identify the form the answers should take, the analysis that can produce these answers, and the data that this analysis would require. Thus, you will know better what your measures are (and what data should be collected to produce them).
MEASURES THAT ARE COMPLEX INDICES
Many people still stand firm on the notion that indexes are a great way to simplify performance meas
Event management is comprised of the study of the complexities of brands, identifying target audience, creating event concepts, and planning the logistics. It also includes coordination of technical aspects before getting down to truly implementing the modalities of the planned event. Event management implies the application of management science to the creation and development of festivals and events.Event management is one of the strategic advertising and communication tools used by businesses of all sizes. Right from product launches to press conferences, businesses develop promotional events so that they can communicate with clients as well as potential clients. They may target their audience by using the news media, wishing to generate media coverage, which will reach thousands or millions of people. They can also invite their audience to their events and reach them at the actual event.Event management company services areas include corporate events such as product launches, corporate seminars, and forums. Services also comprise of retail advertising programs such as road shows, training programs, event promotions, television-based events, specia
"Annual customer satisfaction rating."
"Win Banksia Award for environmental achievement in 2006."
"On-time project completion."
Unless you design measures that give you regular feedback through time, you'll be faced with 'too little, too late". You won't get the information that will help you finetune your strategies (activities, initiatives, projects, etc…) to ensure they actually do produce the results they were supposed to.
The trap you can fall into here is assuming that your strategies will unquestionably work. Instead, work out what results you'd expect to see from these strategies, and explore how you could collect some evidence of this on a weekly or monthly basis. No, it won't always be feasible or possible for everything. But it will be for a lot of things.
MEASURES THAT MONITOR THE 'MEANS', NOT THE 'END'
Another common type of ugly measure is information about the means, not the end, not the performance result or outcome that the strategy was chosen for in the first place.
"Implement organisational restructure by June 2008." as a measure for a goal to improve customer loyalty
"Staff Productivity" as a measure for a goal to reduce organisational costs
"Billing Accuracy" as a measure for a goal to increase payment of invoices before the due date
Can you have an organisational restructure and not improve customer loyalty? Of course! Can you improve customer loyalty without an organisational restructure? Of course! So while implementing an organisational restructure might be one of the strategies you choose toward improving customer loyalty, it is not evidence of customer loyalty. The same logic also applies to the measure of staff productivity posing as evidence of organisational cost reduction.
Direct evidence of the result is essential to properly test our hypotheses about how to achieve that result. If you have measures that track the means and not the end, then you probably need a dialogue to fully describe what the end looks like, and design measures that are evidence of this. MEASURES THAT ARE ACTUALLY DATA, NOT INFORMATION
Some measures are ugly because they are really just data collection processes pretending to be measures:
"Customer Survey"
"Occupational Health and Safety incident reports"
"Budget"
These two so-called measures are data collection processes, and not the information that answers our questions. The measures can certainly come from the data these processes collect, but usually the measures need to be very clearly designed and defined before the right data can be collected.
Do you have any data collection processes that collect lots of the wrong kinds of data? Try to write down the business questions that you really need this data collection process to answer, and work backwards to identify the form the answers should take, the analysis that can produce these answers, and the data that this analysis would require. Thus, you will know better what your measures are (and what data should be collected to produce them).
MEASURES THAT ARE COMPLEX INDICES
Many people still stand firm on the notion that indexes are a great way to simplify performance meas
DUE PROCESSAfricans, especially Nigerians are stereotyped on the internet and offline in foreign countries as corrupt, cheats and thieves.Whenever I have to introduce myself to foreign contacts, whether online or offline, I must make visible effort to prove my contact wrong, because he or she instantly sees me as a scammer-419, another Nigerian cheat or thief.This situation must be very disheartening to innocent Nigerians, who must be wondering why government seems unable to correct the awful situation. But should the question; why is our nation bedeviled with the scam scourge and corruption that rubbish us in the eyes of the international community not be asked?The answer is: Our society is carbohydrate dependent and so poor brained, and government officials are products of this same carb-society. Just as over consumption of carbohydrate predisposes the awful degenerative disease known as diabetes, our country and continent progressively degenerate into poverty, corruption and scam scourge of international dimension.Yes, that's true!The genesis of corruption is poverty. Both Continental and national poverty stem from lack
"Implement organisational restructure by June 2008." as a measure for a goal to improve customer loyalty
"Staff Productivity" as a measure for a goal to reduce organisational costs
"Billing Accuracy" as a measure for a goal to increase payment of invoices before the due date
Can you have an organisational restructure and not improve customer loyalty? Of course! Can you improve customer loyalty without an organisational restructure? Of course! So while implementing an organisational restructure might be one of the strategies you choose toward improving customer loyalty, it is not evidence of customer loyalty. The same logic also applies to the measure of staff productivity posing as evidence of organisational cost reduction.
Direct evidence of the result is essential to properly test our hypotheses about how to achieve that result. If you have measures that track the means and not the end, then you probably need a dialogue to fully describe what the end looks like, and design measures that are evidence of this. MEASURES THAT ARE ACTUALLY DATA, NOT INFORMATION
Some measures are ugly because they are really just data collection processes pretending to be measures:
"Customer Survey"
"Occupational Health and Safety incident reports"
"Budget"
These two so-called measures are data collection processes, and not the information that answers our questions. The measures can certainly come from the data these processes collect, but usually the measures need to be very clearly designed and defined before the right data can be collected.
Do you have any data collection processes that collect lots of the wrong kinds of data? Try to write down the business questions that you really need this data collection process to answer, and work backwards to identify the form the answers should take, the analysis that can produce these answers, and the data that this analysis would require. Thus, you will know better what your measures are (and what data should be collected to produce them).
MEASURES THAT ARE COMPLEX INDICES
Many people still stand firm on the notion that indexes are a great way to simplify performance meas
If you want to enhance your chances for success as an entrepreneur, you should go for the franchising companies rather than starting your new business. However, sometimes, when you do not do proper research and analysis and go for the franchise system, even that is not successful and around for the long term. Therefore, in order to assure success and stability for your franchising business, make sure that you do a thorough research and analysis of all the aspects associated with the franchising companies.The main purpose of starting franchising companies is to bring a product or service to a wider audience. It is only when the company stores taste some success that the associated company begin early franchising efforts.The most difficult phase for a franchising company is to open the first 10-25 franchised units. This is the stage when the company has to learn the concept regarding what will work in which location. The concept varies with the franchising companies. Marketing is one of the most important things that is tried on a larger scale. This might be the most difficult thing to do because the franchising company has to modify, change, refine, an
Some measures are ugly because they are really just data collection processes pretending to be measures:
"Customer Survey"
"Occupational Health and Safety incident reports"
"Budget"
These two so-called measures are data collection processes, and not the information that answers our questions. The measures can certainly come from the data these processes collect, but usually the measures need to be very clearly designed and defined before the right data can be collected.
Do you have any data collection processes that collect lots of the wrong kinds of data? Try to write down the business questions that you really need this data collection process to answer, and work backwards to identify the form the answers should take, the analysis that can produce these answers, and the data that this analysis would require. Thus, you will know better what your measures are (and what data should be collected to produce them).
MEASURES THAT ARE COMPLEX INDICES
Many people still stand firm on the notion that indexes are a great way to simplify performance measurement. An index gets its values by mathematically combining the values of a collection of other measures. It turns many measures into one:
"Road Safety Index" comprising dozens of individual measures to do with road condition, road usage and accident rates
"% of Business Targets Met" comprising all the strategic measures a business has determined are essential to its success, such as revenue, costs, customer satisfaction, employee turnover, process efficiency and so on
"Number of SLA Standards Achieved" comprising the range of agreed performance indicators in a service level agreement
Trouble is, these indexes are often vague and unspecific, so that we have virtually no idea of how to interpret the numbers. We don't know what size of a shift is important to respond to, we don't have an intuitive connection with the numbers themselves, and it really only adds an unnecessary step into the decision process.
After the index shows you a change, what do you need to do next? That's right - go and look at the measures that it is comprised of to find out what's really happening! Why not just use the original measures, and use a form of 'traffic lighting' (visual formatting that highlights which measures are on track, and which need attention).
MEASURES THAT ENCOURAGE THE WRONG BEHAVIOUR
Depending on the maturity of your organisation's performance culture, another type of ugly measure is that which suggests to people to behave in a way that actually undermines performance:
"Number of widgets produced per person per day"
"Time lost due to workplace accidents"
"Sales Representatives' Revenue Ranking"
When measures like these have targets, particularly in a culture where it is typical to pass the buck, point the finger and make excuses, you'll see people fudging the figures, shifting the goal posts, competing with those that should be collaborated with, cutting corners and sweeping mistakes under the rug. This behaviour not only misinforms those that use the measures, but it also causes performance to get worse, problems to pop up in other parts of the business, and risks to sky-rocket.
Avoid ugly measures like these by collaborating with the people whose behaviour will be influenced, and engage them in a conversation to decide what kinds of behaviours should be encouraged. Involve them very directly in the design of measures to support these behaviours, measures that give them the feedback to help them improve performance instead of masking it. MEASURES THAT ARE OVERLY AGGREGATED
Even though they're not as ugly as the types of measures described so far, the following measures hide a lot of valuable information:
"% Deliveries made on time"
"% Customers Satisfied"
"Workplace Safety Level (H, M or L)"
This kind of measure is based on what is called 'attribute data', the simplest of which is where the raw data takes the values "yes" or "no", like in percentages. "We delivered it on time, or we didn't." In the case of the customer satisfaction measure, the attribute data takes the form of a rating scale of 1 to 7 (say), and the percentage of customers that are satisfied are those that rated 4 or higher. Such measures are incapable of showing you how far away from a standard or target you are - they only tell you whether or not you met it. They're insensitive to small changes and early trends.
Why not measure cycle time and get more information? In most cases like these, the data you used to form the percentage is the same data that you can use to give you the whole picture.
BEAUTIFUL MEASURES
It takes a while to learn how to design really beautiful measures, measures that give you valuable feedback at the right time, about the right results. But practice makes perfect, and the ability to recognise what makes a measure ugly is the first step!
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