#59 You Can't Measure An Ill-Defined Strategy

If you're trying to measure things without first having your strategy - your goals, objectives or priorities - firmly and crisply articulated, then you're probably frustrated by where to start, overwhelmed with too many possible measures, or disappointed because you haven't found the measures that really matter.
That's what many of my consulting clients are experiencing when we first start working together: they have no strategy, or they have a strategy that is too vague, or they have a strategy that hasn't been properly cascaded. The first obstacle to overcoming their measurement problems is to make their strategy measurable. This is one of the powers that great measurement has: to make your goals so tangible, so vivid, that you can't not achieve them!

Here is a checklist of symptoms for a quick and dirty diagnosis as to whether you need a little more work on your strategy, before it will be worthwhile to start on your measures.

Symptom 1: no written record of your goals, objectives or priorities

Do you have a document - like a business plan or plan on a page - that includes a summary of the 3 to 10 priorities for your business or organisation right now? If not, then you probably haven't designed a strategy and are instead just managing day to day. Or maybe you do have a loose strategy but it's either in the CEO's head or keeps changing from week to week. Or perhaps your business plan reads more like an essay that fails to make the highest 3 to 10 priorities clear.

In any case, without a formal announcement of and spotlight on the current goals for the business, no-one has a way of prioritising what to measure, because they have no direction as to which results matter most. They're paralysed by the overwhelm of all the possible things they could measure. Not everything matters enough to be measured. A single, agreed strategic direction narrows down the choices (and streamlines the measurement effort).

So, write down your strategy, let everyone know about it, and keep reminding everyone to pursue it, above all else.

Symptom 2: the strategy is a collection of motherhood statements

If you do have a written strategy, is it expressed clearly, succinctly, tangibly, in language everyone understands and uses comfortably? Or is it written in management-speak, jargon, inert language that could be interpreted 7 different ways by 3 different people? Are you using words like efficient, productive, effective, quality, sustainable and best-practice?

If you could copy and paste your goals into another organisation's strategic plan and no-one would blink an eyelid, then you don't really have goals. Without specific, tangibly expressed goals that make it clear what efficient means, what quality looks like and how you'd recognise sustainable, your measures will fail to provide the right evidence of the right results. Remember, what you measure is what you get, irrespective of what your goals say.

So, make sure your strategy is worded clearly and very specifically so that people can easily understand and relate to the words, and all have a consistent understanding of what it looks, sounds and feels like when it becomes a reality.

Symptom 3: everyone's goals are a carbon copy of the organisation's goals

Does your business cascade its strategy in the way that if cost reduction is a goal for the organisation, then cost reduction is a goal for each and every department and team, function and process? Is every team's plan a "Mini Me"(1) version of the organisation's plan? If so, people throughout the business are likely frustrated, being asked to measure things that have no meaning to them, that don't help them manage their real and most significant contribution to the whole business' performance.

Why distract the Design Department with measures about lost time injuries just because it's a strategic priority? Manufacturing probably have the primary influence on that result. The cause-effect model of cascading will lead to more meaningful measures than the Mini Me model. The Design team's contribution to safety is not in their own injury rate (repetitive strain injury or paper cuts) but rather through the features and manufacturing steps they design into the products that Manufacturing will construct.

So, cascade your strategy not by giving every department a copy of it to scale down, but by asking the question "how does this department most impact our strategic goals?"

The process of measurement can make your strategy better!

No strategy is ever perfect, if only for the fact that the business environment changes continuously and often unpredictably. Don't strive to get your strategy perfect before you start measuring, or you'll never end up executing the strategy successfully. The starting point to measuring is a strategy that doesn't show the above symptoms in the extreme. And when you get started with designing measures, you'll find it seduces you to reflect on and refine your strategy even further!

(1) Mini Me is the tiny clone of Dr Evil, both characters in the Austin Powers movies.