Wednesday, June 09, 2010

What Should You Be Measuring?

Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University wrote an interesting column entitled, You Are What You Measure. He states:
If we want to change what they care about, we should change what we
measure…..It can’t be that simple, you might argue— but psychologists and economists will tell you it is. Human beings adjust behavior based on the metrics they’re held against. Anything you measure will impel a person to optimize his score on that metric. What you measure is what you’ll get. Period.

Okay. With that said, what are the numbers that I should measure? My thinking is that in addition to the day-to-day numbers that are normally applied to me in my job, metrics such as these are good: how often do I help co-workers, what is the level of my customers' (manager, business line(s) I code for, etc) satisfaction, how many times do I take ownership of problems that are not mine, etc? Can you think of other numbers?

No comments: