Lessons from Mahabharata -- Ep.3

When Arjuna showed us how to use KPIs

KPIs are something that are widely used in the corporate world. Many leaders and management teams love to ask for KPIs and regularly follow up on them to gain an insights in to how the business is progressing. A text book definition of KPIs go like this

KPIs are the key targets you should track to make the most impact on your strategic business outcomes. KPIs support your strategy and help your teams focus on what's important.

In simple words, KPIs are quantified indicators (in numbers) on the progress of an activity, task, project or entire business. A quick check on certain numbers that shall tell the progress. Quantified indicators are good, KPIs are good but as someone rightly said, "Numbers Do Lie" when its not understood in the context of impact it has. There is a very interesting incident in Mahabharata, where Arjuna showed us how to read the KPI....

It was time for both Pandavas and Kauravas to prepare for the war and one of the huge armies of that time was the Narayani Sena of lord Krishna was one of the most skilled and powerful army. Not only that it outnumbered any other single army in terms of number of Chariots, Athirathas and Maharathas it had. Politically it was a question of which side will this army fight for. Though everyone knew that Krishna favored Pandavas, with the kind of ethics and morality prevalent at that time, Krishna had to show that he had an unbiased approach towards the war.

On a certain day, both Duryodhana and Arjuna went to Krishna's palace to ask for help. Duryodhana reaches the palace first and as he went inside Krishna's room, he found Krishna sleeping on the bed. Duryodhana was asked by Satyaki, not to disturb Krishna while sleeping. So, he went near Krishna and sat by his head on a chair next to Krishna's bed. He began to wait for Krishna to wake up, and just then Arjuna also entered the room to ask for help. Arjuna went and stood in front of Krishna's feet. After some time, Krishna woke up from sleep and as he opened his eyes he first saw Arjuna by his feet, when he greeted Arjuna, Arjuna indicated that Duryodhana was already waiting and then Krishna saw Duryodhana right beside him. Krishna then asks both of them the reason for coming to which they reply that they were there to ask for Krishna's help in the upcoming war. Krishna heard both of them and said " You both are dear to me. You both have come seeking for help. There is no doubt that Duryodhana came first but it is also true that I saw Arjuna first when I woke up. I don't want to disappoint any of you. I will have to help both of you. Let me think, I will provide my great courageous army (Narayani Sena) to one of you and only my consultation, my guidance and support to another one. I will not take participate in the war directly. But who will choose first?, Arjuna is the younger one, I will let Arjuna to choose first. Tell me which offer would you like to take from me?"

Arjuna chose Krishna over Narayani Sena without hesitation. Duryodhana was full of joy from inside and happily accepted the Narayani Sena as help from Krishna. Why was Duryodhana happy? Numbers..... Numbers did tell a lie!

From a business perspective, what Arjuna exhibited is a sheer ability to do an impact analysis of the data and not merely go by numbers. He clearly saw the impact that Krishna's presence on their side would have rather than a huge army by his side as a numer would have indicated. We all know the kind of impact that Krishna's presence on Pandava's side had. Had Arjuna gone by the graph, he should have chosen the Narayani Sena.

Often KPIs simply taken as it is fail to show us the impact index. KPIs consumed without understanding its impact can lead to wrong understanding of outcome, wrong analysis of the situation and finally lead to wrong decisions.

For example, if someone is looking at number of test cases written as a KPI, one could write test cases that have no big impact on actual feature. The graph could be overwhelmingly satisfying but if after all that if one sees a bug still in the deployment then such a KPI driven activity is sheer waste of time and energy. I mean a 1000 test cases that still let bugs slip through to deployment is inferior compared to 50 well thought and written test cases that can seal the defects from reaching the deployment. If the test case KPI is not understood from the point of view of impact it makes, then we are on wrong track. Similarly, 100 well written requirements that help develop a good software and help its maintenance in long term is better than writing thousands and thousands of requirements for sake of meeting a process demand and even worse when its reverse engineered from the code. If one sees the KPI graph only and not the impact it makes, we are not looking in the right direction. I don't mean to discard the advantage KPI brings in any way, in fact I just want to propose how should one read through it.

So lets learn to challenge the first outlook that numbers give us and get to the second layer to not just see the numbers but also understand the impact index. A smaller number may actually have a greater impact than a bigger number. Let Arjuna's presence of mind and clarity guide us to get the truth out of the numbers.