Sunday, January 30, 2011

Measurement, jigsaws, change & people

Change is driven by measurement: measure the current situation , decide how you want that measure to change, make the change then measure progress toward a goal point.

Today on the Mac App Store I found dozens of apps to map, measure and record any and every element of my bodily functions, time, expenses, food intake, exercise regime, and more.

Historically it was quite difficult, and laborious (expensive in both labour and materials) to measure in this way. It's possible today to measure almost anything, and more to measure almost everything.

The hard part is knowing what to measure. When we can measure everything, it's possible to defer action for longer. Paralysis by measurement. The easier it is for our computers to track data for us, it seems the less attention we may pay to that data. Or perhaps the harder it is for us to make sense of that data.

As both a business manager and as a communications consultant, a lot of my work involves finding the piece of the jigsaw that makes sense of all the other pieces. Where do we insert our attention, our measurement and our actions to make the necessary or desirable change?

My experience is that it's not usually where you expect.

Change is usually small in terms of action but profound in terms of outcome. In business, 'convert' even 1% more sales leads and you'll add a much higher percentage to your bottom line.

Reduce one unnecessary or unwieldy step in the process and you'll have a cheaper and more efficient process. Each of these small changes then can have a huge impact on how customers see your business, and how your business sees itself.

This can be useful in our personal lives and in our relationships too. We want a particular outcome. We usually assume 'someone' is doing (or not doing) something. We don't remember to look at ourselves and our behavior. We don't look at the situation and how it may be affecting both of us.

When we get even a small change 'right', we increase our power to make more change. If we choose to.

This is post 19 of 43 posts.
Sent from my iPhone

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