The Customer-Driven Culture: A Microsoft Story

Chapter 8. Measuring Change

In The Physiology of Taste, author Jean Anthelme wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” More than a century later, this statement has taken a much broader meaning to suggest that “you are what you eat.”

What we measure has the same effect on our organizations as the food we put in our bodies. The metrics we use to enforce accountability is where our cultural platitudes are tested. How we define and measure success is the final test that reveals what we truly value as an organization. Dov Seidman, author and business philosopher, says, “What we choose to measure is a window into our values, and into what we value. Because if you measure something, you’re telling people that it matters.”¹

In the opening chapter of this book, we talked about how we “Hacked our Culture” in DevDiv. Essentially, we moved the organization forward by instituting a new language that encouraged new behaviors and thinking, which ultimately changed our values and our culture.

But how do you measure an effect like this? How are you able to quantify your progress and prove that your change efforts are working? It’s not as simple as tracking something like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or customer satisfaction. Of course, measures like these are important in a customer-driven organization, because customer satisfaction is paramount. However, these numbers are less reliable in determining employee satisfaction.

It could be said that your metrics are just as powerful ...