KQ Article

“How much do you love me, Daddy?” That’s the question my youngest daughter used to ask me when she was four. I responded as most parents do: by stretching my arms out as far as my wingspan would allow, and saying with gusto, “This much — no, even more!”

Her eyes always sparkled as she giggled at my dramatic answer to her very important question. Who doesn’t want to be reassured we are loved intrinsically, infinitely? Loved beyond measure? Our exchange was proving Einstein’s axiom, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

You see, my response to my daughter’s question was exactly what she needed to know. I suppose I could have busted out a spreadsheet attempting to show my parental preference toward her. I even could have come up with a daily love “dashboard” that turned love into numbers. Then I could have gone to work on improving the love numbers.

The only problem with that is that improving the quantitative measure of qualitative values (counting what can’t be counted) eventually erodes the very thing you are trying to measure. For instance, keeping score in a marriage will destroy the good feelings that kind actions naturally generate. Of course, that doesn’t prevent a husband’s futility of mentally tracking how many dishes he’s done while his wife longs for the immeasurable quality of focused attention. It’s easy to measure behavior. It’s impossible to measure another’s full presence.

The most critical factors in our most important relationships are in fact discerned, not measured. And that’s at the heart of many of our challenges.

The truism that what gets measured gets done means that if we measure the wrong things, we’ll put our energy in the wrong places. Many of our business problems are amplified today by trying to measure what can only be discerned. When we attempt to replace the seasoned judgment of wisdom or the wake-up call of common sense with spreadsheets, we make ourselves stupid.

That doesn’t prevent managers and consultants from trying to stuff what can’t be measured into a table of numbers. During this most recent recession, I’ve seen countless companies become consumed with measuring trivia, thinking that the numbers will somehow highlight causes for effects they don’t like. But it’s a fatal distraction. What’s most important is the big question, not the small ones.

Successes Immeasurable
Much is being written today on the notion that business has entered a new age. For 25 years, since the dawn of the total quality movement, profits have soared by taking waste out of process. Efficiency has driven strategy. But now we have squeezed that big juicy grapefruit into a turnip, and there is little to be gained through tiny improvements. Today, businesses thrive through innovation that is far more messy and resistant to measurement than what business schools have been teaching.

Perhaps one of the most smothering blankets choking innovation is benchmarking. Measuring our business expenses or investments against our competitors to fit into some industry standard is a sure way to achieve mediocrity. The great companies we most admire over-invest in things that their competitors deem unworthy of their attention.

Apple invested 40 times the amount of money in advertising for its MP3 player launch (iPod sales to date: $200 million) than its frightened competitors. Billion-dollar online shoe company Zappos spends almost no money on advertising, but five times the industry average on customer service and employee training. Neither company spends much time measuring its competitors. Instead, they create their game-changing strategies by focusing on and staying committed to their unique strengths.

The same is true for us as individuals. We all admire the brave and amazing people who do the extraordinary. We admire the few marriages that are truly high functioning, and the families that swim in genuine love. We admire people who take their hobbies to the extreme for the pure joy of it. We admire people who seem to be having fun when the rest of us are scared, sour or depressed. We admire courage, creativity and congruence to values. We admire things that count but cannot be counted.

So we should all be thoughtful about how we measure the success of our enterprises or our lives. What really counts with customers, employees and those we love may simply be immeasurable.

_{© 2010 Will Marre}