What is your sign?
Posted in labor, misc on March 13th, 2009Have you ever seen those “x days since an accident” signs in a workplace? They are placed there because the very act of measuring something has an effect on improving it.
Every organization is measuring something but not every organization takes the time to make sure they select the right things. Are you measuring whether people are at their desk at 8am? It might be vital if there is a shift change or you have set expectations with customers to be reachable at that time.
Measurement always has a cost, either in time spent tabulating or opportunity cost for other focus, so make sure it actually matters. There are few blanket statements, but some good ones are:
- customer satisfaction
- support response time
- new clients in the past quarter
- repeat projects from existing clients this year
There is a trend here. Figure out what matters to your customers and find a way to internally measure your progress satisfying their needs.