LTYM - Teams that don't keep score

Letters to a Young Manager

Teams that don't keep score, #37
LTYM > Measurement

Dear Adam,

***

In IT we measure everything and we measure nothing [1]. That may be more a comment on measuring the things most meaningful to our customers rather than the abundance of data our systems give us that are irrelevant to user satisfaction, things like up-time rather than user pain or delight. That's a story for another letter [2].

There is another side to measuring. It's about keeping score. When two tennis players are having a friendly practice volley, everything changes when one says, "let's start keeping score". The players focus ratchets up, they lunge further, swing more deliberately, play longer and harder. Why? Because the score matters.

Carl Sewell tells the story of a colleague, when he was a student working a summer job at a canning factory. To keep from going nuts at the monotony off the job, he began counting the lids he was responsible for loading into the canning machine. He writes, "After four days of keeping score, I found myself trying to beat my best day, and figuring out how many lids I would have to load an hour to achieve a record pace." After a week, he had the most productive machine in the factory. And he was playing against himself.

There is the "score-boarding" aspect to measuring things that I'd like you to think more about. Putting points on the board. There's a sense of play in this that goes far beyond just keeping score.

***

Sincerely,
Ed

________________________

[1] Bobby Kennedy famously said that GDP "measures everything in short, except that which is worthwhile", March 1968 speech at the University of Kansas. The longer quote follows:

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
"https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE said "Too often we measure everything and understand nothing. The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If you’re growing customer satisfaction, your global market share is sure to grow, too. Employee satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the pulse -- the key vital sign of a company.”

[2] The Hallmark Cards case of The "Good Day" IT measure is a good example of a customer-focused measure. See "The Good Days Score" [Story #29]

Takeaways:

Those who don't keep score are only practicing

Discussion Questions:

1) What are the ways your team keeps score? Do they have a say in what to track and report?
2) What happens when they reach a new high?
3) How is measuring misused in organizations and how can we avoid those pitfalls?

For Further Reading:

"The Good Days Score," LTYM, Story #29

Carl Sewell, "Customers for Life," Random House, Revised Edition, 2009; see Chapter 20, "Accounting for More Than Money" for relating Steve Mulvany's story about counting the lids at the canning factory during a college summer job: "After four days of keeping score, I found myself trying to beat my best day, and figuring out how many lids I would have to load an hour to achieve a record pace."

Steve Hronec, "Vital Signs", "Teams that don't keep score are only practicing." --Tom Malone, President, Milliken & Company, as quoted by Steven Hronec, Vital Signs, AMACOM, 1993, p 14.