“What gets measured gets done.”
It’s invariably in the top 10 of business thoughts along with “If not you, who?” and, “If not now, when?”
Watching the Super Bowl last Sunday, the commentators had an amazing array of performance numbers, statistics and best of records for every player on the field. This is true for football, baseball, soccer, hockey … you name it, and there is a measure for about every aspect of every position, every play, and every quarter, inning or period.
Business people like their numbers and abbreviations, too. Today, they like to call them “Key Performance Indicators,” or KPI’s
It’s an old concept that today’s generation has made their own.
Early in my career, I was tasked with saving an aging manufacturing company. The previous management was highly secretive and didn’t share any performance data. The entire company just droned on in a 1950’s kind of way with no unified direction or goals. It was depressing.
The first thing I did was get a scoreboard. It was placed over the employee entryway. Since I had everyone clock in (me included), everyone saw it. There was a “score” for manufacturing, one for sales, and engineering had a time schedule for all new products.
Everyone saw them every day, and there was a good-natured competition. If sales were behind, you can bet they were chided by manufacturing, and vice-versa. They had clearly stated goals that were on public display.
With the right team, you set the goals, and the team almost performs on its own.
In sports, it’s all about wins, losses and ties. It’s the same thing in about everything we do in life.
Do we have more members than last year? How much is in the treasury? How many people have we helped this year? How much have we donated to charity?
Simple numbers that convey the relative health of your business, your club, your family, or our government.
Yes, it feels good when there is money left at the end of the month, as opposed to having month left at the end of the money.
One number, and it tells you so much. One number that may be a goal for next month. One number that drives your actions to make it improve. The numbers tell such an important story, but only if one listens.
So much of what our state legislature does affects the financial health of our state, and through it, our families. The problem is that the people, you and me, have not sent them to Charleston with clearly measurable metrics.
In the very best bureaucratic way, they have found ways to obfuscate what’s really happening.
Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.
Few, other than our Governor, have even talked about measurable results, and when they do, there are so many conditions placed upon the actual numbers that they are hard to understand, even for those of us who follow the shell game that is invariably being played.
But why would you expect anything different from the overwhelming number of attorneys we are sending to Charleston. I’m not anti-attorney (my daughter is one), it’s just like the old adage about if you’re a carpenter, everything looks like a nail. If you’re an attorney, you want to make laws – and those laws spend the taxpayers’ money. Our money.
If we expect anything better from our elected officials, I believe it’s time to start demanding clear and precise goals from them, and then comparing what they promised to what they actually delivered. No “maybes,” and don’t tell me it’s the other persons fault.
Either get the job done and take credit for it or own the failure.
It’s time we start demanding “wins, losses and ties” from our government in both Charleston and Washington, D.C. We are rapidly approaching a time where we can’t afford the tax-and-spend insanity that both parties have been yoking us with for far too long.
