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Goodhart’s Law

I was talking with one of my staff about some service design issues yesterday. The point that was brought up was about how some action around poor service is coming from a need to present numbers and I brought up the concept of GoodHart’s Law.

If you’ve never heard GoodHart’s Law it goes like this “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

This has show to be true many times over. So if you’re dealing with a problem in your culture, service delivery, etc. Look at the incentives you’ve put in place by what your team believes to be the target.

Often i’ve found the better version is to have a less numerically clear ideal state as a target and the metrics inform if your distance to the ideal state.
E.G. “We never want a client to get off the phone and feel like their problem will never be solved. We want them to get off the phone with us and think ‘they have this.'”
Then you add metrics, not as goals, but as informers of the distance between where you are and the ideal future state.

Thoughts? Have you seen this in your own org?

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Measure What Matters

There’s a trope that continues to track as sensical.

“Measure what matters.”

I was talking to someone the other day about a feature in a product and asked about reporting on it. There wasn’t any reporting against the feature yet. e.g. who used it and how it was used. The thing is, if it really was valuable, you’d want to track the results. Are you adding features without a thought about how to communicate the value the feature gives back out? If so, then the reality might be the feature is useless. If it were useful you’d want a feedback loop to understand how.

Adding something custom without a mechanism to report back it’s use tells me it’s busy work.

What do you think? Is this true? Have you ever found anything valuable for which you didn’t have a subsequent reporting mechanism?

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Consipracy Or Just Broken Stuff?

Conspiracy theories are fun and they tend to come out in droves around this time of year. For fun I try to one-up the other person’s crazy. e.g. “The moon landing didn’t happen.” “Oh, you believe there’s a moon?”

Here’s the thing, not all conspiracy theories are wrong, and not all are right. Applying Hanlon’s Razor is important “”Don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.” The question is how do you approach all subjects with a healthy level of scepticism against whatever the subject matter is to sus out the underlying incentives and corresponding actions to that.

Sometimes it’s bad actions, and sometimes the world around us is simply it’s own treatise of what we’ve asked for as a collective of people in a market. I mentioned to someone earlier today that Coca Cola only has 39 grams of sugar. The reason they don’t go higher or lower is because they found out in testing that they sold less on both the over and under. 39 Grams isn’t an evil corp putting too much sugar in so much as it’s what everyone was asking for through the nature of a market.

This leads you to the question of what have you been asking for? Many drips fill a bucket. When you look at the world around you, where are you going with the market and shouldn’t? Where should you be the first drip? Where are you ok with what you’re living with?

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Seek Wisdom

I’ve been managing a situation with my staff that is causing stress lately. The phrase “most people overreact as quickly as possible” comes to mind. I’ve been using it a lot this week and helping lead people to slow down and take a breath.

In the middle of that, I sent one team member this list of old sayings about words. They cannot all be applied together, they’re individual. So you’ll see the conflict on some. I read a book of them for at least one month out of every year. If you read these particular sayings below once per week for the next year, I think it’ll pay dividends on how you navigate what you say. You’ll find yourself speaking up at times you wouldn’t have before and find yourself not saying things you might have otherwise said.

->”When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.”
->”The mouth of the fool is his ruin, but the wise man’s lips guard him.”
->”Even a fool is thought wise when he keeps silent, and discerning when he holds his tongue.”
->”Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues”
->”The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit”
->”Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits”
->”Just as damaging as a madman shooting a deadly weapon is someone who lies to a friend and then says, I was only joking”
->”Patience can persuade a prince, and soft speech can break bones”
->”Kind words are like honey— sweet to the soul and healthy for the body”
->”Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed”

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Stories behind the Stuff

I used to think this house was obscene. Clark Griswold unrestrained. Then I heard the story behind the lights. The family who lived there started this so their daughter could see the lights while in the hospital one Christmas. It’s amazing glow knowing the story behind something, having the context, gives something an entirely meaning.

How true is this also for people? What are the stories you don’t see. How could they change your experience of a person? What are the other questions you might need to ask yourself or those you lead?

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Make Sense of Negative Turns

Victor Frankl’s thesis about life is that negative turns in a person’s life are always bearable if they have a context, if they’re in a story framework. This is also true about your career. Take some time and think through the positive and negative turns of your career journey. You’ll be able to pull out some patterns that can help inform what you should do in the future and what you shouldn’t do in the future.

How often do you step back and take a breath to review? How aware are you of your own journey here?

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Revenue Quality

Not all revenue is created equal and not all money is as green.

Business is not about how much you make, it’s about how much you keep.

There are times that you face a realistic situation where you drop lower topline and increase earnings below the line. Just takes knowing your numbers enough to see the path.

Business owners, ask yourself this: if you took a hit on your revenue but your earnings grew, would you do it?

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First Principles

Employee asking me about their internet being out for a chunk of Monday. Worried they’re going to get docked pay.

First question I had: Aren’t you salaried?
Them: Yes.
Me: I don’t know why that matters then.
Them: Ok that’s cool.

Next question I had: In those situations, do you have a laptop?
Them: Yes.
Me: So you could go offsite somewhere with internet in the future?
Them: I can go to ________, or to family’s.
Me: I know that’s not ideal , neither is doing nothing for the same reason.
Them: True on both. I’ll go to family’s in the future.

Two things for us
1. Let’s think by first principles –> If they’re salaried, stop thinking about hours as directly.
2. Ask questions that help your staff begin to solve their own problems. –> If you see an employee just sitting there because of something external. Push them to a place where they have to think about that. Let them solve it

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Best Future Skill

The biggest predictor of success in the future of every organization will be delegation. With the advent of agents, even if your over or under on if agents with action will be delivered within 2 years, the ability for every entry level employee 10x their work by delegating tasks to agents is a huge benefit driver.

Have you imagined what it will look like for your business’ top line increasing by an order of magnitude at 3x – 4x and only growing staff by 10%? What are the skills your team needs to do that? How do you train for it?