Quantity Metric, Quality Metric
Aug. 29th, 2024 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerYesterday I started writing about metrics. Specifically, using metrics on people in the workplace. It's become a fact of modern life that we're constantly measured in what we do at work. So much of what we do is already managed through computer software, and modern computer software makes it trivial to collect— and report— metrics. But the challenge is that while metrics are historically easy to get, they're no easier than ever before to understand. And it turns out few people in business really understand them.
One big failure of metrics in business I saw was in my sales organization several years ago. A quantity metric without a corresponding quality metric is useless.
Here's what happened: The manager of business development representatives (BDRs) hired a hot-shot BDR, "Missy". Missy was way more successful in booking meetings for field sales reps than any other BDR. Booking those meetings was the job of a BDR. And she wasn't just a little better than the rest.... She blew them out of the water. She booked three times as many meetings as the next best rep on the team, a skilled and thorough person who'd been doing it for years.
Ah, but there was a catch.
The catch was that Missy's success record was basically bullshit. The meetings she booked were low quality. Half the time the prospective customer wouldn't even show up. Half of them time when they did show up, the field team was able to disqualify them in the first 5 minutes. Missy was supposed to be asking those basic qualification questions. She wasn't. She was making ridiculous promises to anyone who said they were okay taking a meeting with us, because she got paid on scheduling the meeting. She got paid even if it was a bullshit meeting.
Missy's boss, and her boss's boss, only looked at the metric of "How many meetings were booked". They didn't even have a metric for "What's the quality of these meetings?" While my team wasted time sitting in Missy's bullshit meetings, Missy got big bonuses and won accolades. A quantity metric without a corresponding quality metric is useless.
By the way, this idea isn't novel. One of the first workplace metrics I ever encountered was typing speed. It's measured in Words Per Minute (wpm). And there's a standardized definition of a word. It's 5 characters. But you can't just type sloppily to get a higher score on typing tests, because there's a penalty for mistakes. Every mistyped character is a 2 wpm penalty. Right there: a quality metric corresponding to a quantity metric. Leaders in modernizing the workplace understood that 70+ years ago. Yet it's a surprise to most business leaders today.
One big failure of metrics in business I saw was in my sales organization several years ago. A quantity metric without a corresponding quality metric is useless.
Here's what happened: The manager of business development representatives (BDRs) hired a hot-shot BDR, "Missy". Missy was way more successful in booking meetings for field sales reps than any other BDR. Booking those meetings was the job of a BDR. And she wasn't just a little better than the rest.... She blew them out of the water. She booked three times as many meetings as the next best rep on the team, a skilled and thorough person who'd been doing it for years.
Ah, but there was a catch.
The catch was that Missy's success record was basically bullshit. The meetings she booked were low quality. Half the time the prospective customer wouldn't even show up. Half of them time when they did show up, the field team was able to disqualify them in the first 5 minutes. Missy was supposed to be asking those basic qualification questions. She wasn't. She was making ridiculous promises to anyone who said they were okay taking a meeting with us, because she got paid on scheduling the meeting. She got paid even if it was a bullshit meeting.
Missy's boss, and her boss's boss, only looked at the metric of "How many meetings were booked". They didn't even have a metric for "What's the quality of these meetings?" While my team wasted time sitting in Missy's bullshit meetings, Missy got big bonuses and won accolades. A quantity metric without a corresponding quality metric is useless.
By the way, this idea isn't novel. One of the first workplace metrics I ever encountered was typing speed. It's measured in Words Per Minute (wpm). And there's a standardized definition of a word. It's 5 characters. But you can't just type sloppily to get a higher score on typing tests, because there's a penalty for mistakes. Every mistyped character is a 2 wpm penalty. Right there: a quality metric corresponding to a quantity metric. Leaders in modernizing the workplace understood that 70+ years ago. Yet it's a surprise to most business leaders today.
