On metrics

I was talking to Josh re six degrees of separation, global networking etc. He also brought out a good point re blogs and stuff in that maybe we should be looking at using them for adult (no, not that kind of adult stuff - out of the gutter, all of you!!!) show and tell a couple of mornings each week to stimulate discussion and perhaps feedback that discussion back into the blog (maybe more on this on The Strategist). I really do get the impression that many people are quite shy about commenting on a blog...whereas I've always been a bit short on shame (or so I'm told)...

Anyway...metrics...I hate them...balanced scorecards...I hate them too...I'm not anti trying to do things smarter, not at all, but I am totally anti any attempt to try to beancountise things that can not be easily quantified, more so when, IMHO, what this is really doing is saying to those professionals who are involved that "...we don't really trust (understand) you unless you can convert what you do (or say you do) into a nice little spreadsheet preferably with good use of colour..." Sometimes you just have to and should trust to the experience of others - which then implies that what we should be doing is whatever needs to be done to make sure that that experience contributes to an accurate (as possible) SUBJECTIVE assessment.

If you look across the staff branches (or one variation on the theme anyway) from 0-9, (0=comd/coord and includes legal probably because no one else will have them; 2 = intel; 3 = ops; 4 = log; 5 = plans or civ-mil affairs, works either way for this argument; 6 = comms/CIS; 7 = training; 8 = conepts and evaluation; 9 = finance/resources), some lend themselves to quantifiablity (1, 4, 6, 9 perhaps) and others (0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8?) to qualifiable judgements (based on training and experience). In the end it all comes down to the professional opinion of the guy in charge, and that's something the beancounting/BI community need to get their heads around.