What does it mean to improve? How do we know we are improving?
One line of thinking tells us that we can only improve what we can measure. Sometimes when we hear “measure” we think of cold, hard things, like money and bottom lines. Yet, if we get creative, we can find ways to also measure the things that really matter to us — like how we feel at the end of a day, or the levels of joy across our teams.
A guide I like to ground into is to consider for any improvement effort we’re moving into, can we come up with a measure that matters to us from each of the following categories:
- Quality
- Time
- Cost
Quality can include things like how satisfied our clients are, or measured as the number of defects in the offerings we created last week. It can also be, on a scale of 1-5, how excited was I this morning to start my work day.
Time can include how long it takes to finish a client assignment, or to onboard a new team member. It could include how long I procrastinate before starting a task I’ve been feeling intimidated by.
Cost ties in to each of these — quality defects translate into rework that I have to pay for; the longer I procrastinate, the higher my opportunity cost! Yet, there are other costs as well, like basic costs of running my business (rent, utilities, website hosting, paying salaries, etc.).
When we think about identifying measures that help us track our improvements, the trick is to choose measures that we actually care about, that matter to us.
What are some measures that matter to you?