If you are striving for high performance – be it for your business or a personal competency, you should be interested in tracking metrics that indicate if changes need to be made to improve.
Managing a software engineering team might involve measuring the lines of code written or perhaps the number of story points the team has accrued over the course of a sprint.
In learning a language with the Duolingo app, the primary measure of progress is the number of points I have earned between Monday and Sunday.
Insurance companies measure the number of new customers gained.
Airlines gather metrics showing the number of unoccupied seats.
Behaviour adapted for metrics
People or businesses will inevitably amend their behaviour if there is a particular metric (or metrics) that define their success – they are likely to optimise so that their metric scores are as high as possible.
For instance, if I worked in an organisation that only measures and rewards me for my promptness in replying to emails, I am likely to optimise the way I work so that responding to emails becomes my top priority. The downside is that it is likely that I am going to be distracted in meetings, the thoughtfulness of my emails will most likely suffer and the time I spend in deep work will be restricted to those times when my colleagues of clients aren’t sending email. Focusing our attention on a particular set of metrics is inevitably going to cause side effects.
- A software engineering team is likely to lower their focus on the performance, quality and elegance of their code if they are being measured purely on the number of lines written.
- Duolingo’s weekly finish line is Sunday, which is also when time runs short, so I frequently rack up quick, easy points on Duolingo by repeating the beginner lessons I have already mastered – and in doing so, I will learn nothing new.
- An insurance business focusing on bringing in new business may end up doing so at the expense of loyal customers, who become disgruntled at the superior prices offered to new customers.
- Airlines overbook flights to ensure seat utilisation is as near to 100% as possible; but in the pursuit of flights departing at full capacity, the airline may be forced to turn passengers with paid-for tickets away – and be faced with having to pay them compensation .
Pair the yin metric with the yang metric
Andy Gove suggested that when identifying a measure, a counter-measure should be paired with it. The counter-measure represents the unwanted side effect that introducing the measure could inadvertently foster.
- In software, the number of lines of code written should be paired with a quality metric and a performance metric
- The Duolingo app should measure (and score me) based on new material I have learned over a given week as well as scoring me by the number of lessons taken
- Insurance companies should pair the metric of new customers with the retention of existing ones
- Airlines should not just measure the number of seats occupied, but also the number of passengers turned away due to the flights being overbooked
Metrics in business and in life are like the displays in a cockpit – the improvement in one positive measure (rate of ascent) needs to be assessed in tandem with a counter-measure (airspeed) – if this isn’t done, stalling becomes a risk in aviation and in life in general.
Picking the right measures needs to be balanced and holistic in order to drive meaningful and sustainable positive outcomes.