Friday, August 21, 2009

Management Measures

I do business with a great number of people, from "Whose turn is it to buy ice-cream?" all the way to classroom training sessions and major upgrades to applications.

I was taught by ICL many years ago "Management Measures".

I am reminded of this by Bob Bly's blog today, he writes in part

• Lord Kelvin, the British scientist, said: “If you can measure something in numbers, then you know something about it.” Conversely, Kelvin’s statement implies that if you cannot measure something in numbers, than you do NOT know much about it.

(Lord Kelvin is also reported to have said '"X-rays will prove to be a hoax.", but you can't win 'em all!)

ICL management expected at least one of four quantifiers in every paragraph, otherwise the paragraph was said to be verbiage.

Numeric: 20% reduction in development time, $5,000 increase in revenues, 5 new contacts.

Date/Time: By Friday, August 28, 2009 at 5:00 p.m. (Note NOT "at close of business", but another numeric quantifier)

Boolean: Yes or No, will or will not, have or have not.

Spatial: 32 Grenville Street

Suite 402

Toronto; Ontario

CANADA M4Y 1A3.

Our fortnightly reports, each paragraph, had to hold quantifiers. What we had hoped to achieve over the preceding two weeks, what we did achieve, what we did not achieve, why we did not achieve it, and what we hoped to achieve next fortnight.

Kelvin again: ”"If you can not measure it, you can not improve it."

Would you like to increase your enterprise revenue? Measure it.

Would you like to decrease your enterprise costs and expenses? Measure it.

Would you like to improve your enterprise profit? Measure it.

Above all Measure IT!

P.S. As this was being written The Toronto Star published Inventing a Better Passport whose last paragraph reads "Passport Canada doesn't keep track of the mistakes, just the number of free replacements, he said.".

What are their chances of improvement?

Search