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Metrics, metrics, why must you be so complicated?

I’ve always thought that measuring stuff was pretty easy. If you’re just starting out trying to “implement some metrics” – it’s super easy to start. Measure whatever you can measure. Don’t start with “what you think you want to measure, if only you knew how to collect that data.” Start with what’s easy to measure. What can you learn from it? Learn how to use data for insight.

And as you learn how to measure, you start to get a sense not just of what to measure, but to what degree of depth those measurements are useful. So the “if we only knew how to collect that data” excuse starts to fade.

Mechanics aside, I always thought that metrics were pretty straightforward – even as your organization matures and your measures become more complex, you’ve grown along with that complexity, and built measure upon measure. It’s still straightforward.

But every truth has a counterpoint.

For support, rather than illumination.

You can use metrics to validate (i.e. prove you are right) and you can use them to learn. And if you are using metrics to learn, that inherently implies that you need to change what you measure continually. Look at it this way: You can learn what times people normally eat lunch by standing in a restaurant and counting the people buying lunch. But you have to track specific individuals to determine how likely people are to be repeat customers. Because wouldn’t you operate the business differently knowing that your busiest spike was at noon, but also knowing that all of your repeat customers typically show up at 12:30? (Yes, you would.)

Where you are -vs- where you want to be
I had epiphany today about some of our operational metrics. Yes, we are measuring the right objectives. Are we delivering what we say we’re going to deliver, on time, on budget, of appropriate grade and quality? Fine. But we’re measuring what we think we’re capable of. We set a target and expect to achieve it. How are we doing?

Well, it’s certainly valid to measure what we hope to achieve. But what about where we hope to improve? Obviously, we can pick something that we think we need to improve and start measuring the heck out of it until it has higher numbers and everything is fantastic. But that’s just validation. What about illumination? We also need to measure what we’ve never considered measuring – what can we learn from it? Not to say we should just start measuring everything that moves (or doesn’t.) But return to that infancy principle of “measure what you can.” What do we not see? What data looks like nothing? Because “nothing” may just indicate really, really poor performance.

So is measurement for improvement straightforward? Simple!

But measurement for discovery requires that you find new territory to search.

The xxx 2.0 moniker is getting stale, but it’s become synonymous with collaboration, contribution and participation on the web. As many organizations still struggle with “do WE exist2.0 or don’t we?” when it comes to engaging their customers, there seems to be an even more difficult justification to employ those tools internally.

What does it mean to bring youtube into an office? Now we can share embarassing videos from the office Christmas party? Does adding a message board mean that we can totally insulate ourselves from ever having to have a face to face discussion again? How do effectively use these tools within an enterprise? Where do they add value? Where will they be quickly adopted? And, most importantly, how much do we spend on something that may be a fad?

These tools have had rapid adoption in the social arena. Taking movie quizzes and knowing on a Saturday morning that Angie the Product Manager is “Making nutmeg pancakes -yum!” is fascinating, but what do we get from E2.0 tools that we didn’t have yesterday?

In the days before email (remember?), we talked to each other. On the phone or in person, almost everything was handled with a conversation. We got to know each others’ personalities, facial expressions, likes & dislikes, plans with the family, etc. Much of that interaction was lost when email allowed us to “dispatch and forget” – to pass work or decisions on to our colleagues in a lengthy note .. an note that may or may not have been read, understood, interpreted as intended or responded to.

Social tools begin to bring some of that connection back by combining work and personal life. People crave that; they must. Just look at the adoption rate of facebook among adults.

Not only do we connect on a personal level again with our colleagues, but we can connect with colleagues who are in a different location. When your staff is geographically dispersed, creating connections is more important and more difficult .

Case in Point: Working on webjunction.org, a virtual community for library professionals, our business team was located in Seattle, while our technical team was in Ohio. Not only was there a physical separation, but also a noticeable division between the teams – styles, objectives, personalities. Face to face visits went a very long way in team building, but visits could be few and far between, costly, impractical and very difficult to justify travel for every team member.

Before Facebook allowed open registration outside of .edu’s, we adopted Twitter. More “what’s this and what can you do with it?” than having any real strategy in mind. But we quickly found that daily, even hourly interactions were enormous – not just “what are you doing?” which is helpful in project status updates, but more importantly “what are you thinking?” which telegraphs to “How are you thinking?” So we not only bonded as a team, but we found we were more often than not on the same plane in terms of business strategy and rollout strategy.

Also, by virtue of being short messages, the fluff was cut out – communication had more impact when it got directly to the point.

Collaboration is easy to defend – but how is E2.0 collaboration adding value to the type of collaboration that already existed?

In-person collaboration is great when a high-performance team gets together. Awe-inspiring, even. But it doesn’t need to stand alone! In a collaborative session, no matter how democratic you try to be, some people naturally dominate the discussion. Some people do their best thinking after they’ve had time to digest, process and create. Some people are more creative in the morning, or in the evening.

Combining in-person collaboration with web-based tools like message boards or wikis extends the collaboration past the time constraints of the face to face meeting.

Case in Point: In the current program I manage, we meet regularly to brainstorm ideas and impact analyses. As we meet, we document the meeting in a wiki while projecting it on the wall. Everyone can see what we’re agreeing to (or not) and that exact record can be updated later by any participant (or absent team member) to include additional thoughts.

So how is that any different from a good ol’ document? It’s in the name: wiki. Wiki doesn’t mean ‘collaborate’ or ’social’- it means ‘quick’. The value of the wiki is that we can quickly author documents and quickly make updates and revisions without the cumbersome checkout/checkin process. *

Result: Documentation is up to date. We find that documents are much more often accurate because the tool doesn’t get in the way of the process.

*There does exist some debate about document control with a tool that allows for easy change. While a wiki does save history, it doesn’t easily permit an “official” version of the document to be the document of record. Collaboration is easy on a wiki – but putting a stake in the ground is not so simple. Our solution to this at the moment is to take a snapshot of the wiki when it is at the state of being ‘complete’ or ‘agreed-to terms’- and we upload it to a controlled repository. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it isn’t that unwieldy and the extra steps are worth the added value of using the wiki.

Have you ever written a document that no one read? Even if the first paragraph conveys “what’s in it for me?” it’s still a tough sell to get people to see what’s in it for them. Document walkthroughs and formal reviews can help twist people’s arms so they read a document, but you generally get limited attention and superficial involvement.

By getting people involved early in contributing content, they will be much more compelled and invested in the development process – even if it’s only to see where their ideas made an impact. Access to the process is the selling point in stoking interest.

CTRL-C & CTRL-V – It doesn’t take too much effort to cut and paste information. But 2.0 tools allow syndication of information from a single source that can automatically update in multiple channels and from multiple channels.

Case in Point: I adopted the use of a blog to write about project status. Team members can see a detailed daily/weekly status of what’s happening on the project – decisions, issues, business considerations, philosophy – the blog gives the team a little more insight into the heads of the leadership. But depending on how we tag certain blog posts, those posts may be rolled up to a higher-level sponsor’s report or combined with other projects to present an overall portfolio status. Using tags, we can target the content to specific audiences, but only write it once.

If your business involves direct contact with customers or if you’re wondering if it should leverage web2.0 tools to support the business, doesn’t it make sense that your internal staff would understand the application of those tools?

It’s hard to put a value on the return provided by these tools. Cost is a little more quantifiable and naturally the first question – What’s this going to cost me?

Well the costs are anywhere from almost nothing to way too much. Start by answering these questions:

1.- Where do we need to improve our processes? Or, where could we benefit by improving our processes and being more innovative?

2.-Where are people likely to adopt new methods and tools?

A large, fits-all solution is very likely to have integrated components, common user experience and good support. It’s also likely to have a bunch of features that you’ll never use, weak usability, and high support costs.

Individual components generally play well together and provide a level of flexibility that all-in-one systems do not. It also enables obsolete components to be replaced more easily. (Avoid customization!)

And you WILL want to replace components! The selection of tools should be organic – open up the process to multiple solutions. Let the users decide which tools work best. (Participation, remember?) Management needs to be there to support the vetting process, ensure that the tools & processes align with strategies, methodologies, quality management system, policies, etc. Imposing a tool almost always ends in misuse or nonuse. Even with careful research, you’ll be wrong! Be a leader and a champion.

While some tools help a team to perform better or remove obstacles, I always bring the discussion back to this:

Don’t let the tools take the place of real interactions and good processes.

Tools are there to support the organization. Documents, online collaboration, frequent blog postings – can all be great to reinforce your message, to work through issues or to provide a baseline from which to work. Online connections can foster team building where it was not naturally occurring. But none of these tools are a complete solution and none of them can be dropped into place.

Experiment. Learn the possibilities. Invoke solutions that provide value and rapid acceptance.