I first heard this business adage from JD, a seasoned grocery store executive who had well-defined views of what drove profitability in his stores. The grocery business tends to have low margins, and JD made his store managers track and stay on top of their data, day to day, week to week, and month to month. Most of the profit in JD’s upscale chain came from premium prepared food so that’s the measure he watched like a hawk. If a store started to lag in a category of prepared food, JD would immediately contact the manager to figure out why and what could be done to prevent it from becoming a trend.
Sushi sales were down at a particular store? Turned out that the sushi chef had changed his hours and was missing the early evening rush when customers frequently bought their sushi. An easy fix as long as you had the data.
Businesses are designed to make a profit, but even for businesses, what you choose to measure is not always clear. Is it profit quarter to quarter, year to year, or on a longer timeframe?
It gets even trickier when you start measuring the individual performance of an executive. Choose the wrong measure at your own peril. Incentivize a bank loan officer based primarily on their volume of loans, and you risk a lot of defaults and loan losses. Measure them primarily on avoiding loan losses, and you risk a drop in loan production.
You can also apply this to your own life.
I’ve decided that most of what I can truly control by myself is a series of actions that are individually microscopic, but add up over time. This morning, before my wife woke up, I took out the garbage. I may get a tiny bit of credit for it. Or not, as it’s expected of me, and my wife had already pre-tied the bag. It might be more accurate to say that by taking the garbage out, I avoided a mistake.
On the other hand, last week I dropped the complicated controller to our television. A screen popped out and, stupidly, I immediately jammed the screen back in, but in the wrong position, thereby inflicting a mortal wound on the controller, which died and had to be replaced.
Thankfully, neither my alacrity in taking out the garbage nor my bouts of fumbling clumsiness are key measures of my success as a husband or the determinants of the happiness of my marriage. At least as far as I know.
Which brings up another point. Contrary to Tolstoy, any happy marriage is the result of some unique blend of the choices and behaviors of both spouses. I can’t imagine any happy marriage, or any happy relationship, where one partner believes they are solely or even primarily responsible for its happiness. Such a selfish attribution of happiness would itself be fatally self-defeating of its very object.
I’ve been thinking about measurement in the context of my pivot toward public policy and how “what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done” could apply to political governance.
Ideally, the executive in charge of a political jurisdiction should want to be measured on what they have control over and then take credit and accept blame for those things.
As a practical matter, particularly in national politics, that’s not how it typically works.
It seems our presidents cannot resist the temptation to take credit for good things, regardless of whether they had anything to do with them. The clearest example is a president who takes credit for a burst of economic prosperity. Then, when the economy turns, he will be blamed. Maybe even if he hadn’t taken undeserved credit, he wouldn't receive the undeserved blame. But perhaps there’d be some allowance given for intellectual honesty, authenticity, and consistency.
It would be refreshing for a mayor or a governor or a president to set out what they believe is in their control and what is not. And then use that as one criterion for what they want their time in office to be measured by. Whether they could convince the general public of what they can and cannot control is another matter. That might depend on their gift of rhetoric, on their gift of charisma.
At the very least, a good leader ought to accept within themselves the limits of their control. And also understand that even those things which a government can control lie beyond the capacity of any single individual. The best leaders will have the self-confidence and resilience to share success generously and to shoulder blame disproportionately. That doesn't seem to describe many of our political leaders today. But that can change.
Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address tried to give some context as to why America had endured four years of Civil War. Perhaps more than any other president, he was a prisoner of events beyond his control. Perhaps more than any other president, it could be said that he was indispensable to holding America together. Yet, on the eve of final victory, he took no credit, ascribed no blame. His Address could be summarized with one simple sentence in the middle.
“The Almighty has His own purposes.”
True humility rings clear as a bell.
Nice. In Haiti there is a saying for the fortunate few that can get anything done: “ Little by little a bird builds its nest.”