Part Two · Develop Expertise

Metrics Governance: Informed Decision-making

A metric that never triggers a decision is a ritual, not a metric.

In brief

A metric that never triggers a decision is a ritual, not a metric. The chapter separates reporting metrics from governance metrics and gives three tests every governance metric must pass: behavior change, ownership and decision relevance.

What the chapter covers

Reporting vs. Governance
The Vanity Metric Problem
Leading and Lagging Indicators
The Three Tests of a Governance Metric
Building Closed-Loop Feedback Systems
The Political Problem with Fewer Metrics

Every metric on your dashboard is consuming attention. What matters is whether it’s consuming attention that produces decisions, or attention that produces the feeling of being informed.

Questions for your team

If our most-watched metric moved sharply in the wrong direction tomorrow, what would we do differently?
Which metrics on our dashboard have no clear owner?
For our most important lagging outcome, which leading indicators do we watch?
Which metric would we retire today if nobody had sponsored it?

Field Guide Tool #9

The Metrics Governance Audit

Inventories every current metric, applies the three governance tests, maps leading indicators for critical lagging outcomes, and produces a governance decision for each metric.

Best used during any metrics review or when the dashboard has grown unwieldy.

Go deeper

Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming