The Business-Oriented CIO: A Guide to Market-Driven Management

Chapter 8. Performance Management

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.

—Lord Kelvin

We're all entitled to our own opinions; we're not all entitled to our own facts.

—Phil Gramm

One day a man announced that there was an elephant in the village. Six blind men, who had never experienced an elephant, rushed (as well as blind men can) to the animal and started exploring it with their hands.

The one who touched its head said that it was like a pot. Another held its tail and said it was like a rope. A third felt its leg and said it was like a pillar, while yet another held its trunk and said it was like a tree. The fifth touched its ear and said that the creature was like a fan, while the last embraced its side and said that it was like a wall.

They were arguing over who was right when a wise man approached and said that they were all right and yet all wrong. Insofar as they only experienced a part of the elephant, they were only able to accurately explain that part; but since they could not touch the whole creature, they were lost regarding its complete nature.

This story is attributed to the Chinese, and to both the Buddhists and Jains in India, and to the Muslims. It has been used to describe everything from epistemology and metaphysics to a defense of Christianity. It is believed to have originated ...