Santorine: Numbers Are Numbers, and They’d Better Add Up

How many? How much? What’s the score?

Those are the objective measures that “numbers guys” like me prefer.

Quantitative measures. There is $1,345.33 in the treasury, or there is not. It’s precise, and it’s not open to argument. It either is, or it is not.

It’s the reason that Roberts Rules of Order does not call for a motion or second on the Treasurer’s Report. It is to be a statement of fact.

A friend from the Netherlands once quipped that he could not believe how competitive Americans, as a people, are in about everything. A European will walk into a bar where the game is on TV and will ask how they are playing. An American demands “What’s the score?”

Same question, just a completely different approach to an answer.

One is qualitative. The other, strictly quantitative.

I don’t know that the answer will be the same at any given point. I do know that at the end of the season, your performance will be measured in Wins, Losses and Ties. A measure that is purely quantitative.

Your team won. Or lost. You can play well and lose. History will only remember you lost.

The business version of this is “What gets measured gets done?” Or so says the guy who bought a scoreboard that hung over the entrance to a manufacturing operation I ran for a few years. Daily sales. Moved to finish goods. Shipments. The financial health of the firm, held out for all on the team to see.

It was measurable. Direct. Unequivocal. The people on the production line knew their future depended on sales, and were as brutal with the sales staff as they were with their favorite sports team.

The sales team knew their future depended on production to make good quality product and to do so on time. Good salable product, which would result in an honored invoice so everyone was paid. So, we could go forth and have lives.

The numbers tell a story that those who know how to read such things can manage. They are the “Key Performance Indicators” in MBA speak. They were the key before B-schools named them.

Understanding the numbers isn’t, in my favorite malapropism, “rocket surgery”

Being able to reliably effect those numbers positively in a large organization, is complete and utter magic, and it’s why we pay what we do for those who can.

I’m a numbers guy because of circumstances, and because of a handful of truly talented and gifted educators that I was fortunate to encounter in my life.

When I was in the seventh grade, the nation was convinced we were going to join the rest of the world with the metric system, and the educational establishment was going to prepare the next generation for a metric future.

The course was “Introduction to Physical Science.” It was a bit of chemistry, some physics, and this is where the powers that be decided to insert the metric system. We learned all about the metric system, and how to convert from “imperial” to metric.

Please, hand me that 12.7mm wrench, will you?

I thought it was stupid. But I never met a test I didn’t want to beat.

A thirteen-year-old Dolph, armed with a rudimentary knowledge of the prefixes in the metric system (Milli, centi, kilo) and three basic conversions (length, weight and temperature) proceeded to ace the test because it just made sense to me.

Is that half an inch, or 12.7 millimeters? Same difference.

Of course, the teacher, Ralph Weichand, was completely superb. He also put up with me.

He would be amazed to know that a couple of decades later I would be sitting between some American and European engineers “translating”… not the languages or the measurements, but from one set of tolerances and practices to another. Machinists know that stacking tolerances make all the difference in the world, especially when everything measures correctly and in tolerance, but won’t go together. Length is length, and accuracy (tolerance) matters.

I also received my “numbers guy” card from my math teacher, John Sullivan.

For the record, I was not a particularly good student, but when I needed to learn something, I got on with it. I was right down the rabbit hole with things that caught my interest, and struggled with things that didn’t.

In his class he had a large slide rule that hung over one of the blackboards. Calculators were new (and expensive), and there was the slide rule. Larger than life, and visual. Something just clicked. The solution was close enough. The relationship was priceless.

A visual picture, indelibly imprinted on my mind that a refer to even now.

Numbers that were fundamental to understanding car stuff. Amateur radio stuff. All the formulas that makes audio work.

Want to learn to fly? You have to have the math with which to do it.

He likely does not remember how masterful he was working with me, but it made a fundamental difference in my life, and how I think.

He is an accomplished water skier, Short Wave (AM) distance listener, and baseball aficionado. While all sports have numbers, baseball takes it to a new level. The last time I saw him, he gave a tie with all the major-league ballparks on it that he had intended to give to my Dad.

Sitting on my desk is my Grandfather’s slide rule from 1915. It is nowhere near as precise as the calculator on my iPhone. It provides answers that you simply can’t get when you are precise to the fifteenth digit.

More than half a century ago, these educators made a huge difference in a socially awkward kid’s life, and I’m grateful. Their lessons are living and relevant to this day.

I’m a numbers guy. That’s not about to change.