#48 Five Tips for Naming Measures

What's in a name? Well for performance measures, there's a lot in how they are named. Different organisations, in their performance measure experiences, have helped me see that what we call each of our performance measures can have a big impact on how useful those measures are. Here are five of the tips I'd recommend you consider when you want to formalise a particular measure in your organisation (you don't have to use them all, though):

• unique name

• accompany with a description

• motivating language

• adopting industry standards

• 5 words or less

• leave the target out

tip #1: give each measure a unique and specific name

A transport company I have worked with measures hundreds of things. One of them is the number of orders for deliveries. A pretty straightforward measure, you might think. Except that depending on who reports it, it is called different things, so users of the reports never know exactly what they are looking at.

Make sure the adopted name is the one that is used where ever and when ever that measure is reported.

tip #2: accompany every measure name with a description

Have you ever been frustrated by a report where a name like "Customer Loyalty Index" sits above a chart, and you have no idea what the numbers mean?

Use a sentence that describes what your measure is, giving more information than any name can. You might like to include things like the type of statistic (e.g. average or percentage), for what population (e.g. all employees versus non-managerial employees), and what the construct of the measure means (e.g. have attained all competencies associated with their current roles).

tip #3: use engaging and motivating language

I've recently worked with an organisation whose people are very creative, and they inspired me with their approach to naming measures: they used very emotive exclamations as measure names. For example, "You can't keep me away!" as the name for a measure of customers coming back for more.

Play with using affirmations, catch cries, headlines or other sensory rich statements to name measures.

tip #4: adopting industry naming standards

In the procurement industry, how fast inventory is turned over is a commonly used measure, and most often, it is referred to as 'Inventory Turn'.

If you're using measures that are accepted more widely in your sector or industry, adopt the naming conventions that are already accepted.

tip #5: use five words or so in the name

Too few words in a measure name can be as bad as too many. "Customer Index" says virtually nothing, whereas "The percentage of customers that either strongly agreed or agreed that our service is better than any of our competitors" is too long. A balance might be struck half way between the two: the measure name of "Compared to Our Competitors" with a description matching the longer statement above.

Aim for writing you measure names in around 5 words, and fine-tune it from that starting point.

tip #6: leave out the target

"Reduce waste going to landfill by 20% next year" is not a measure, but a goal (or objective if you prefer). The measure is actually the amount of waste going to landfill. The rest of it is really the target and timeframe.

Because measures often outlive their targets (that is, a single measure may have several targets throughout its lifetime, each subsequent target encouraging further improvement), name your measure before you frame it in a goal or objective statement.

the advantages of well named measures

Irrespective of whether you take on these ideas for naming measures or not, you'd have to acknowledge that when measures are named well, they get higher recognition, greater ownership, and far less confusion. So thoughtful naming of your measures is one little thing you can do toward simplifying an activity that probably already causes you more rework than you dare to think about!