Risk

     “Do you believe you can support your family if this doesn’t work out?” she asked.

     “Of course!” he responded.

     So he left his secure job and moved his family hundreds of miles. His five-member group was preparing to launch a new business that they hoped would provide professional success and a good living for them all.

     A second member of the group also moved. The two of them were going to do the spadework for  the start-up.

    Within weeks, the whole project collapsed.

   

Measuring & Managing

 

   In our never-ending quest for assurance, we jump on anything that sounds simple and can pass for realistic. Here’s one such thing, a commandment for managers:

     “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

     True or False?

     You could almost say the famous statement is both. It’s true and it’s false. (Sort of like the good ol’ boys of The Great White North who liked to “both eat in and take out.”)

     It’s true that managers must have ways to determine the effectiveness of their efforts. They’re investing to make things happen, and they need to know how it’s going. Managers build processes, then tend and adjust them to achieve maximum benefit.

     They have to keep track along the way.

     But it’s not always mathematical. With the really important things, assessment of progress usually is too subtle for quantification alone. There may be evidence of progress or slippage. There may appear to be both.