Part 26 (1/2)

The short length of this chapter is intentional in order to help you focus on the power of metrics You e they can do to your organization if wielded i Aire to ith a civilian electrician, Toood friend He was older than ood advice on ave me was to respect the power of electricity because even trained electricians have been badly hurt-or worse-perfor cause of fatalities in the construction industry

I bring this up because metrics are like electricity Metrics can be used to do a lot of good As a tool, they can help us understand our environ They can make communication easier and clearer But like electricity, metrics must be respected If you follow the rules, you can use electricity-and metrics-to make life better But, even if you follow the rules, there reh that you have to decide in each case whether the benefits make it worth it

Most of this book discusses how to develop, analyze, report, and most ianizational iic plans, and eood if used improperly And in most cases, it's because the wielder of the data isn't well-trained or wary enough to understand the powerful but risky nature of metrics

Metrics have the potential to do ood

As I've already covered, you have to work hard to get to the right root question: develop an abstract picture of the answer, identify the inforly set up processes for collecting, analyzing, and reporting the h all this, you have to double- and triple-check everything from the data to the collection methods to the metric itself, and then, finally, the root question

Be diligent and rigorous in your efforts because it is extremely easy to make errors Even when all of your data are verified, you can have errors in interpretation I once had an interesting debate with a coworker over the concept of facts He felt that ood ones, were facts; and if they weren't facts, we shouldn't use them to demonstrate performance I had to explain, at least from my view, that metrics are not facts Metrics are first and foreht, but they are not necessarily the truth that is being sought They are not facts

Metrics are not facts They are indicators

Metrics: Indicators or Facts?

This distinction as to whether metrics are indicators or facts is at the core of proper metrics use If we treatdecisions too hastily

How aboutfacts about your speed? Is it precisely accurate or does it have a +/- deviation? If your speedooing 58, which is truth?

Youdevices, there is obviously a true speed you were traveling at And, I'd agree You were definitely traveling at a specific speed at a given moment But, I have little faith that any device used to capture a particular h to call that measure a ”fact”

Let's try subjective measures Say I ask you to rate your satisfaction with hly dissatisfied, 2 being dissatisfied, 3 being neutral, 4 being satisfied, and 5 being highly satisfied I should be able to consider your choice to be a fact, right?

Wrong

The only fact that I can ascertain on a survey is that the answer I receive is the answer you gave And even then we may have errors In custoet the nu this type of error, can't we say the results are facts? Again, the only thing we can categorically attest to is that the anse have is the answer the respondent chose We cannot know for a fact that the answer given was the true answer

This uncertainty has been analyzed and researched to the point where I can say with confidence, that most answers are actually not true In The Ultimate Question(Harvard Business Press, 2006), Fred Reichheld researched the best customer satisfaction questions to ask to deterrowth His study was based on responses from promoters (those ould recommend a product/service) and detractors (those ould steer people away from a product/service) One by-product of this effort was the realization that people don't answer surveys in a totally truthful manner

Basically, Reichheld found that on a 10-point-scale question, a ”6” is not truly neutral Most people who felt neutral about the product or service being rated actually gave 7s or 8s, although this range was clearlymore favorable than neutral

I believe this happens on a 5-point scale also Most custoive you a ”3” if they feel ambivalent about the product or service Let's look at a simple translation, shown in Table 14-1, which I propose is much closer to the truth for the majority of respondents of a customer satisfaction survey

What I've found is that unless the respondent was actually angry about the service, he won't give it a ”1” Therefore, 2s become the choice of the very dissatisfied (those just short of angry) Threes are given by custoh to say so Fours are provided by those who are either barely satisfied or indifferent And 5s are given by those who are quite satisfied

If you discounted all 3s as neutral responses, you ent of dissatisfied customers

So, what metric is fact? Especially in our definition of a metric, which is made up of multiple data, measures, inforh variables at this level to make any ansay short of ”fact” How about at the lowest levels, though? How about data? Can't it be trusted to be factual?

No Scientists keep finding that things they knew to be a scientific fact yesterday are totally wrong today Automated data collection systems can easily be miscalibrated and provide erroneous data (my bathroom scale is constant proof of this) When we add people to the equation, the possibility of errors increases

Technology is great; as it advances, the accuracy of data increases But even when using current technology, it is critical not to treat nificance than they deserve, you run the risk of h base information should never be considered to be entirely factual or without fault, it shouldn't deter you froe will guide you to use metrics as they are intended to be used-as indicators to help support your decisions

Metrics should never replace common sense or personal involvement

Misused Metrics: ”Our Customers Hate Us”

Let er's well-intentioned use of ood A team of hard workers were told that they were hated by their customer base Or at least that's how they interpreted the story shared with them by their boss

Every teeks, the CEO would meet with his depart, they'd review every custoanization These ratings were labeled highly dissatisfied and dissatisfied

In reality, all this exercise shoas the nu We don't know , when given, were also scrutinized Based on these comments, most customers were clearly unhappy, but occasionally it was obvious that the respondent si at each case, it was clear to ry, and they always used the opportunity to give a lengthy comment on why they were upset

After the department heads reviewed the surveys with 1s and 2s, if time allowed, they would look at 3s since the comments provided normally indicated a level of dissatisfaction and pointed toward areas that could be improved