You Move what You Measure! Leading the SpringHill Way – Part 3

Recently I meet with a CEO of a large publicly traded company.  I was seeking input from her about how she effectively  leads a fast growing and changing organization in hopes of applying what I learned from her in my leadership context.  At one point we moved to discussing the essential nature of measuring the right things. That is when she said “you move what you measure”.

Then she shared one example of a simple behavioral change her company wanted to make with a key group of their business partners – improved timeliness of monthly reporting – and how, by simply adding on-time reporting as a measurement to their weekly scorecard, they drastically improved performance in this area.

So the question is – why does something as simple as measurement change behavior?

First, measurements provide feedback and, as social science has clearly demonstrated, feedback is essential for any behavior change.  Secondly,  by choosing to measure something you’re also communicating it’s importance to the organization.   And this is important because people want to do meaningful work that aligns with the values and the priorities of their organization.

Finally, there’s one other bit of advice this CEO had about measurements. She said that  it’s important to pick only a handful of measurements because, as humans, we can only focus on a small number of things at one time.  So when we measure to many things the measurements looses their power to change behavior.

I’m thankful for this part of our discussion because it affirmed one of the important components of leading the SpringHill way that I shared with our leadership this winter – “what gets measured is what gets done” or as this CEO stated “you move what you measure”.  And because we value getting things done, especially the right things, measuring them is an absolutely essential practice that SpringHill leaders prioritize, value, assure happens.

For more perspectives on place of measurements in your organization click here and here.