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How Do You Assess Performance that Defies Measurement?

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Yesterday we saw that a great organization is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time.

But how do you measure “superior performance” and “impact”? — especially in the social sectors, where they are hard to quantify and thus largely defy measurement?

Jim Collins answers in Good to Great and the Social Sectors:

For a business, financial returns are a perfectly legitimate measure of performance. For a social sector organization, however, performance must be assessed relative to mission, not financial returns. In the social sectors, the critical question is not “How much money do we make per dollar of invested capital?” but “How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?”

Now, you may be thinking, “OK, but collegiate sports programs and police departments have one giant advantage: you can measure win records and crime rates. What if your outputs are inherently not measurable?

The basic idea is still the same: separate inputs from outputs, and hold yourself accountable for progress in outputs, even if those outputs defy measurement.

Here’s the key point:

It doesn’t really matter whether you can quantify your results. What matters is that you rigorously assemble evidence — quantitative or qualitative — to track your progress.

If the evidence is primarily qualitative, think like a trial lawyer assembling the combined body of evidence. If the evidence is primarily quantitative, then think of yourself as a laboratory scientist assembling and assessing the data.

To throw our hands up and say, “But we cannot measure performance in the social sectors the way you can in a business” is simply lack of discipline.

All indicators are flawed, whether qualitative or quantitative. Test scores are flawed, mammograms are flawed, crime data are flawed, customer service data are flawed, patient-outcome data are flawed.

What matters is not finding the perfect indicator, but settling upon a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results, and then tracking your trajectory with rigor.

So when there are aspects of your performance that seem to defy measurement, you aren’t stuck. You just need to think in terms of assembling evidence.

Much of that evidence may be qualitative. But that’s fine — in that case you are just thinking like a trial lawyer rather than a laboratory scientist. Therefore, lack of easily quantifiable performance outputs does not need to preclude your ability to give intelligent thought to identifying a consistent method for assessing results, and tracking them with rigor.

Intel's Multitasking Concept Brings You Three More Screens

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From Fast Company:

Sitting in the coffee shop with forty Firefox tabs open on your laptop, wishing you had one more monitor? Or three? Today at IDF, Intel introduced a multi-tasking concept PC that allows users to work on their main screen while providing three small auxiliary screens above the keyboard for organizing and accessing smaller, snackable chunks of info from their PCs.

The concept PC was developed with an eye toward future-gen laptops–on which you can organize more information while still reducing the size of your notebook. Without affecting the information or activity on the main screen, you can access information–say, a phone number in your address book or a reminder you’ve placed in your sticky notes–while keeping the desktop as clutter-free as possible.

I’d like to see this — or something like it — catch on. It is very needed, and a solution like “Spaces” for Mac doesn’t do the trick for me because you still have to switch screens.

Avoid the Gray Twilight

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From Theodore Roosevelt (quoted in Built to Last):

Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, not defeat.

What is a Great Organization?

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Jim Collins gives a very helpful, succinct, and profound definition of a great organization in Good to Great and the Social Sectors:

A great organization is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time.

So there are three characteristics of a great organization. They are:

  1. Superior performance
  2. Distinctive impact
  3. Lasting endurance

I think we ought to aim to build great organizations, and so it is helpful to have a good outline of what that means. It’s not enough to just say “we should seek to make our organizations great.” We need to know what that means. This is a good start.

Having this before us, though, also leads to more questions — such as “Why should you try to build something great?” and “How do you assess how your organization is doing on these qualities, especially when they are hard to measure?” I’ll address these questions in upcoming posts.