You get what you measure – a lesson from journey times

For as long as I have been working, I have flown up and down from London to Aberdeen.? I lived in Aberdeen for fourteen years and would regularly fly down to London; now that I live near London, I make the return journey at various times.

When I started flying, the scheduled time from Heathrow to Aberdeen was an hour and twenty five minutes.? The actual flying time is about sixty minutes, the rest is taxiing etc at both ends.? Currently, the scheduled time is one hour and forty minutes.

Now, I am not aware of any tectonic activity in Britain that has moved Aberdeen further away from London.? The same number of planes are taking off and landing at Heathrow and Aberdeen airport has not suddenly grown in size.? So, how has the scheduled time got longer?

I suspect that it is all to do with “being on time”.? Airlines are measured on how many flights depart and leave on time and are rated accordingly.? So, if they schedule the flight for longer than it needs to be, they have a greater chance of arriving and departing on time.

Incidentally, if a flight leaves one minute before it is scheduled to leave, it is classed as leaving early.? However, it can arrive up to fifteen minutes after the scheduled arrival time and be classed as arriving on time.? Not exactly consistent on their terminology.

The same has happened on the railways.? You are able to claim compensation if your train is delayed by more than fifteen minutes.? Amazingly, once this was introduced, journey times got longer.

So, what can we conclude from all of this??

It is fairly obvious that you get what you measure.? Rather that do the difficult task of ensuring that planes and trains leave and arrive on time, not withstanding factors outside of the control of the operator, the easiest way of “being on time” is to lengthen the journey.

Exactly the same happens in any role.? If you define success based on a specific metric, then people will focus on that metric and do what is required to be successful.? Now, we need people to be successful and so need to provide a way of measuring that but we need to be careful about which metrics we choose as there may be unintended consequences.

In sales, this is definitely the case.? Most sales people are measured based on how much revenue they generate for their company and this is a very important measure.? However, it can lead to sales people caring only about closing the deal and little about how the customer feels at the end of the process.? If the customer feels hard done by, they are unlikely to do business with you in the future so while the deal may be good today, it may not be overall.

Equally, sales can be lost through no fault of the sales person.? They can do everything right, work tirelessly on an opportunity only to lose it when something out of their control happens.? They get no reward or recognition for this.

Revenue is also a lagging indicator.? Success is only declared once the deal is done.? If things are not going well, they only become apparent at the end of the process.? It is often better to measure the inputs to the process to determine if the right activities are being done.? If so, they are more likely to lead to success and if they are not happening, it can be rectified quicker.?

However, again, that measure can be abused.? Measuring the number of meetings that a sales person has can be considered to be a good input measure.? More activity (meetings) leads to more deals is a reasonable assumption.? However, this is only true if they are the right meetings with the right people.? Meeting for the sake of a meeting is not a great activity and should not be rewarded as such.

So, what to make of all of this?

It is clear that measuring performance of sales people is critically important to the success of the company.? However, just focussing on revenue does not drive the best behaviour.? Equally, just focussing on inputs without considering quality does not result in perfect results.

The answer has to lie in between, with rewards for quality input and outputs.? Measuring the quality of the inputs is more difficult and needs to involve support and coaching so that the sales person can understand the quality required and be helped to improve their quality over time.?

Working with an external coach can be extremely beneficial to a sales person in the early stages of this process as the support can be taken without prejudice or concern.?

None of this comes easily, of course.? Getting planes and trains to run on time is difficult so it is easier to comply with the measures by extending journey times.? However, when we are dealing with people, giving them the right coaching and training can have massive benefits in terms of how they deliver their work and only gets better over time.