What gets measured


... gets managed".

A quote wrongly attributed to Peter Drucker (he never said it).

Nonetheless, you've surely heard it.

But the thing is that a measure only tells you nothing. It's a point in space. It doesn't have context. It's a data point.

Measurement: the reading of something.

You can't manage a measurement.

What you can do, though, is apply judgement to it, so that you can inform a decision.

The (risky) thing is:
1. Getting the wrong things as metrics
2. Using these metrics as measuring
3. Falling under the misbelief that because something was measured, it can be attributed to one specific point (as if businesses are siloes).
4. None of them put the key in judgement. Because poor judgement leads to bad decisions.

You're supposed to measure EVERYTHING that really matters to have a sense of where things are going.
But that's that: a sense.
So that you can correct the course.

It all comes down to your judgement. And how to train it.

Rod Aparicio

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Anyone with money. Anyone who is willing to pay. Anyone that needs our thing. How do you reach to this specific anyone? If you can’t come up with a very clear specific description of who this “anyone” is, it’ll be hard for them to know you’re talking about them. For them to know of you. For them to recommend you to more like them. At the end of the day, anyone is no-one.

In diving, when you’re overwhelmed, you stop everything. Then, you breath. Assess. Decide. Same is in business. While everything seems urgent, you can only do so much. So stop, breath, assess, decide. And to get to that decision, you’ve already thought of a few ways to go about it.

Just as a band starts playing in a house, to small gigs, to more small gigs... all the way to stadiums with thousands of people. It's the same with decisions. The more controlled, low-impact, and low-risk decisions you make, the easier it is to see the patterns to move upwards. It's simpler to stir the wheel and correct direction with small decisions, than to shift everything from one decision. Quantity over quality first, quality over quantity then.