From the book organisational-abilities
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“What gets measured gets managed - even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so.”
-Edward Deming
What should leadership be looking at to gauge progress?
We’ve already seen that any measurement needs to provide us with information that helps decide what to do next.
Only measure something if you are prepared to act on it.
Leadership’s job is to help teams to do their best work, to create an environment where they can excel, provide clarity of purpose and remove blockers in order for them to achieve business outcomes. Clearly to provide this support you have to know how things are progressing. This measure provides a signal as to where your help, or a decision might be needed.
In many contexts (but not all), teams should be as autonomous as possible. Being closest to the work, and most knowledgeable about it, they’re often best placed to make decisions. The availability of information makes the decisions better, and faster too since they don’t need to pass information up the chain and wait for it to come down. I’m not saying that leadership should be over eager, on edge and jumping in at the first sign of an issue - or distrust that teams will come to them. I’m saying that there needs to be a decent feedback loop in place for management to gain awareness, give (and receive) feedback, and proactively provide support.
The information should lead to 5 questions related to progress: