The Data Fluent Culture - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 134

HR decisions, by incorporating analytics into the HR process, leaders can also
set a tone and expectation for data fluency, even in areas of the organization
that do not typically use data.
When you have the right people and leadership priorities in place, the next
challenge is to define the right metrics to focus the organization on.
ESTABLISHING kEy METRICS TO
RALLy AROUND
Can you imagine a basketball game without a hoop or a tennis match without
sidelines? In the absence of clear goals and a way to measure progress, orga-
nized sports would be . . . disorganized. The same is true for organizations of
all types—in the absence of clearly communicated metrics of organizational
success, employees have no way to know if they are on track, contributing in
meaningful ways, or merely spinning their wheels. To create a culture of data
fluency, leaders must establish key organizational metrics that guide indi-
vidual and organization efforts. This section first discusses the characteristics
of a good metric and then describes specific ways that leaders can leverage
metrics to drive organizational improvement.
WHAT MAkES A GOOD METRIC?
Misaligned goals, distorted behaviors, and a misguided sense of success . . .
no, we're not referring to college graduates or politicians. We're describing the
problems caused by using poor metrics in your organization. One common
example is the customer service department that tracks calls handled without
regard for the quality of the caller experience. The first step in establishing
what makes a good metric is to understand what you want to achieve.
Metrics can serve two purposes: identifying problems and measuring perfor-
mance. When the goal is to identify problems and pinpoint areas of opera-
tional inefficiency and ineffectiveness, defining the right metric requires a bit
of detective work. It requires you to uncover the data residue of a problem
and to determine what evidence can be found and how exactly it shows up.
When the goal is to measure performance, the right success metrics focus on
measures that can be controlled and where improvement in the metric is an
unambiguously good thing.