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What Gets Measured Gets Done!

"What Gets Measured Gets Done"

Whether as an individual or as a manager, in life or career, there will be an ambition to achieve a certain goal or objective. The only way to chart effective progress is by some form of measurement, in the absence of an agreed form of measurement, I believe the progress towards the attainment of a target becomes subjective and open to debate and disagreement.

In the first instance, the target or goal must be realistic. If unattainable targets are set, then this will have a demoralising effect on the individual or departments which strive to achieve, but are never successful. It can also lead to bad practice by the temptation to distort the measurement methodology in order to present a successful performance when in reality, it is not.

If an ambition (personal or business) is to be realised, then a route leading to the achievement of that goal must be plotted. If the strategy adopted is clear about the level of achievement to be expected at given milestones (time/event), then deviation from those milestones can be corrected swiftly within the whole timeframe. This is of course also dependent on the frequency of those checks or measurements. The more frequent the checks, the faster the response to correct those deviances within the whole period.

As a manager in a business it is vital that clear targets are set for employees in order to meet Business goals which are then laid out as a forecast. To fail or under perform in any of the sub-elements of a departmental forecast, puts disproportionate pressure on other areas of the business in order to compensate for this failure.
These individual departmental targets are therefore critical to delivery of the overall forecasted performance.

Measuring is also important to assess the ability of the people working towards the required goal, if constant underperformance against 'realistic' targets is a feature of a particular individual or group then step can be taken to address...