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The Only Good Metric Is a Stakeholder-Value Driven Metric
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
Everyone is talking metrics these days as if it were some new discovery. Yet with all the dialogue there still seems to be a bit of confusion as to how to create meaningful metrics. Maybe it's because so many managers just don’t get it. It is easy to find things to measure; it is altogether different to measure the right things. So what are the right things to measure in an organization? From my experience, the things to measure are those things that make you successful. And what makes a company successful? Simple, delivering value to stakeholders (customers, owners and employees to name the big three). Therefore it only stands to reason that all metrics should be stakeholder-value driven.
Building stakeholder-value driven metrics is not rocket science. However, building the right metrics does presuppose that you have a fundamental and definitive understanding of what value is being delivered to stakeholders and the gap between what is being delivered and what is expected and needed. Without that information in hand, it is unlikely at best that quality metrics and supporting tracking and reporting systems will yield any returns.
Metrics can be a good thing or a bad thing depending how well they align with delivering …
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