An Example for Why You Should Measure Before Taking Action

What is the order of activities in your strategy execution process?

Is it set goals – identify actions/initiatives – select measures to track??

A few weeks ago, one of my collogues Gohar Orozco Assoian shared an article about why the order should be set goals–measure–identify actions/initiatives.

This is the most logical order of activities in executing strategy and reaching performance targets.?

Of course there are more activities in this sequence:

• Set goals (as clear statements of what impact to create or results/outcomes to achieve).
• Select & define measures (or KPIs) to strongly measure the goals.
• Collect data to measure current performance.
• Set target values.
• Understand why the current performance is different from the target value.
• Identify actions/initiatives to close the gap between the current performance and the targeted performance.
• Start testing your actions by implementing in a small scale.
• Change what’s not working.
• Measure the amount of improvement.

This approach makes the process faster, because it prevents losing time and resources on actions not working and supports your strategy execution better.

I want to share a real example with you to paint the picture better.?

We were working with one of my clients to identify their department goals. I asked whether there were any recent problems or pain points they observed that if removed can have positive impact on the organization’s strategy. They said yes; by management decision, one of their processes were moved under the responsibility of another department a few months ago and they started to hear customers complaining and not happy. They thought the process has slowed down because of this change. So, they wanted to set making that process faster as a goal and proposed to take action to assume the responsibility of that process again.

I said, okay, but let’s measure the cycle time of the process first (which was the measure we identified for that goal) and then see how much change we are talking about before bringing this issue to the management and taking that action. Because yes, they “thought” the process has slowed down, but didn’t actually measure it.

We measured and saw that the cycle time has actually decreased right after the process was moved under the other department! We checked the data to see if there was a mistake, but no, it was correct.

Then I said, now please dig deeper into the complaints you said you hear from your customers to understand what’s really going on. They did, and found out that the actual problem was about being reachable by the customers not about the process time. As the responsible people changed in the company, the customers faced difficulty in finding a point of contact to ask their questions and get satisfactory answers.?

If they have taken the first action came to their mind without measuring and digging deeper into the causes, instead of making performance better, they would have made it worse in addition to the lost time and effort for taking the wrong action! With this approach they were able to figure out the actual problem area to focus on and have a chance to act on it.?

As humans we have our own biases and tend to make assumptions that have the potential to mislead us. That’s why we need objective evidences first -i.e. measurement- before deciding on what action to take.

Was this example useful for considering a change in your approach??

Do you have any similar experiences to share?