Cash Is King

CHAPTER 7Metrics

What's measured, improves.

—Peter Drucker

What do think of when contemplating metrics? When you saw that there is a chapter on the subject, did you skip ahead to this page with great anticipation? It's hard to know if we've made progress or if we are somehow falling behind unless we capture measurements. And, oh, do we love to measure things! Most organizations measure everything in sight whether the information is useful or not. This leads to complacency and lack of understanding for what is really going on.

We live in a DRIP world: data rich, information poor (coined by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in their seminal book In Search of Excellence). We measure a lot of things but fail to use all that data to make effective decisions or change processes.

Bob has long feared that Owens struggles with this. It's a company filled with engineers, and they really love to measure stuff. So, it was a bit counterintuitive that Bob decided to task Arthur with a review of Owens's metrics. Arthur is the chief engineer and although he does not actually wear a pocket protector, he certainly does live up to many stereotypes of engineers. Then again, he does defy some of the stereotypes because he is known to play part‐time in a rock band.

“Art, rumor has it that you are in a band. Is that true?” Bob is the only one who calls Arthur Art. Or maybe the only one who gets away with it.

Arthur chuckled. “Yeah, it's a few guys from my neighborhood. We drive our families nuts, ...