It’s not about the numbers

I must be the last business person alive to read Jack Welch and the GE Way by Robert Slater. Not something I’m proud of, but at least I’m getting around to it now. It’s a better book than I expected.

A theme that comes up over and over again is Jack Welch’s insistence that business is not about the numbers. “Don’t focus on the numbers”, he is supposed to have said. “Numbers aren’t the vision; numbers are the product. I never talk about numbers.”

Yet it is equally clear that Jack Welch cared deeply about the numbers: cost control, market share and profitability. So what’s it all about?

Of course Welch was right – the financial numbers are the result of everything else you do. If you get the rest of business right – the right people, the right products being sold into the right markets, and the right focus on quality, the financial results will also be right. And GE’s numbers were right.

According to Slater, Welch focused on getting the right people into top positions, and on sharing good ideas between different businesses – both internally and externally. He was also a big fan of Six Sigma – the quality system with a big emphasis on measurement.

So Welch used numbers to inform him of what was going well and what needed attention. He focused on making sure things happened when and where they were needed.

Oddly enough, it’s just what the rest of us need; even though we are not running GE. Because no matter how loud we yell, or how hard we try, getting the numbers to improve without carrying out all the necessary stuff that goes before, isn’t going to cut it. We should put our focus on the things that build better products and services for customers, and the things that get them to market faster. Then the numbers will take care of themselves.

7 Good Ways to Better Planning

The importance of good goals and good planning comes up over and over again in Performance Management. You simply cannot perform well if you don’t know what you should be doing, or why you should be doing it. It sounds so obvious, but somehow day to day stuff often gets in the way.

Here are seven good ways to ensure planning gets done, and gets done to a high standard:

1. Work in a distraction free zone. This is important for any kind of work, but particularly for planning. Some people find classical music helps to really concentrate; personally I like quiet. Planning necessitates ignoring the minutiae and concentrating on what’s really important; what will really make the difference. In order to find those important ideas, you have to give your mind space and time.
2. Work in multiple time horizons. Ensure you have the long term goals and ambitions right, but also ensure you have planned out what you need to do this week, this month, and this quarter to achieve your goals.
3. Work through the pain. Planning is difficult and there is always a temptation to do something easier, or something that will give an immediate payback. Stay with it, feel the uncomfortable feelings of not knowing, and work it through until the plan makes sense.
4. Include numbers. Numbers being dates, estimates, quantities and financials. Unless you can quantify how long something will take, or how much money it will cost or generate, or when it must be done by, it isn’t a plan. It’s an un-thought-through wish list.
5. Collaborate. Plans that have been done with other people are better plans than those done alone. All plans require other people to make them happen, so include them in the planning process. Ensure that those doing the work are able to contribute. Ambitious plans that require everyone to work together need to have everyone’s input right at the start.
6. Finish it. Planning is a valuable tool to refine and improve thinking, but it also makes sure you have a roadmap moving forward. Planning that takes so long that it never gets finished, and never gets used, might as well never have been done. Set a time limit, work hard and well, and get a decent plan together that can be used. You can always refine it later.
7. Enjoy the process. Rather than seeing planning as a drag, enjoy the mind-expanding experience. Planning is a time to see the world as a better place through our actions and our work. What could be more enjoyable than that?

Planning and goal setting is such a fundamental part of achieving anything that it is worth thinking about how to get the environment right to do it better.

What are your top tips to better planning?

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The Power of Round Numbers

What is it about the big ‘0’ that has such a hold over us? Round numbers have a magic that a ‘7’ can only envy. Anniversaries, birthdays, turnover, profit, runs, wickets (I think, I don’t play cricket) and speeches all have an allure in their round-numbers that we don’t quite understand.

Setting targets, meeting targets, or just living all has extra significance in round numbers.

In fairness, there are other numbers that also have a magic to them: 25, for example, and perhaps 7.

All of which is a roundabout and performance management way of saying I passed a milestone last night. I delivered my 10th Toastmasters' speech and completed my Competent Leader manual.

I don’t feel any more competent than I did yesterday, but that’s missing the point. Although I wasn’t 100% happy with my speech, I am certainly a better speaker today than I was before I delivered my first speech. Which is the whole point – pushing me to deliver 10 speeches gave me the practice and exposure I needed to improve my skills. And 10 is a nice round number to aim for. It is arguable whether doing 12 speeches might not have made me an even more Competent Leader, but the Power of Round Numbers won out and 10 speeches are in the manual.

What hit me this morning as I was still going over all the things I could have done better, was that hitting that milestone was important. Not important because it has finished something, but important because it allows me to step back and evaluate my progress. So often that’s what targets are all about. Phases of a project, or interim steps to a larger goal are designed to allow a pause for evaluation of what’s going right and what’s going wrong.

So whilst I expected to impress myself and everyone else with how I put Barack Obama’s speaking skills to shame, what I found was a milestone that forced me to look at where I thought I would be, and where I actually am. And then figure out what I’m going to do about it. Barack Obama isn’t safe yet, but it may take a few more than 10 speeches to reach his standard.

Round numbers have an undeniable power that is worth being aware of. Setting targets or performance management and measurement can all make use of the added magic they bring. It goes without saying that any number, round or otherwise, forces you to quantify your target. Quantifying targets is an absolute basic in improving performance; not always easy, but always effective.

So one target met, and the next one to aim for. Isn’t it always the way?

And a big thank you to everyone who voted that ribbon my way last night.

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it

Lord Kelvin is best known for his work in thermodynamics, the temperature scale named after him, and providing brilliant quotations for the Getting to Excellent blog. His studies of heat determined that there is an absolute minimum temperature: zero on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to –273oC.

Although he might have preferred to have been remembered as a physicist rather than a performance management expert, his observation that "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it" is worthy of any manager wanting to improve performance – however performance might be defined.

In 1867, together with Peter Tait, he wrote the first ever textbook on Physics – Treatise on Natural Philosophy. To the delight of school boys everywhere, it is still in print today.

Amongst my favourite Lord Kelvin quotes are:

“Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.”

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”

And my personal favourite:

"Radio has no future."

Hey – anyone that invents thermodynamics can be forgiven the occasional slip.

By all accounts he was a man of enormous energy, giant intellect, and a tremendous capacity to apply scientific knowledge to practical problems such as laying a telegraph cable across the ocean bed. He was one of the pioneers of electric light and lived in the first house in the world to be completely lit by electricity. He earned himself considerable wealth through his ability to solve practical problems for companies.

He is buried in Westminster Abbey next to Isaac Newton and acknowledged to be the greatest physicist of the 19th Century.

Reading the meter

Performance management in the living room

I get very strange mail these days. I used to know where I was with what is less than affectionately known as “junk mail”. Companies wrote to you so that you could buy more of their product or service. Depending on what it was, I either did or didn’t, then I threw the thing in the bin.

These days, that’s all changed. I get mailings from my electricity company imploring me to use less electricity. They gave me a free counter to tell me how much electricity I’m burning up – the idea being that when I can see how much it costs to have the heaters on I’ll be less inclined to. It works. I’m using less electricity. They sounded less than thrilled when I phoned them with the news, which is confusing, but I think I’ve saved a few quid off the ‘leccy bill.

Of course the other thing that’s changed is that I’m not allowed to throw the junk mail in the bin. I have to recycle it. I’ve not heard the term “recyclable mail” but I’m sure it will catch on in time ….

So all of this got me thinking – put an energy counter in my living room and I start to behave differently. I look at my counter when the washing machine goes on. I have a quick peek as the iron heats up. I stare at the thing in total puzzlement when I think I have turned everything off but I’m still using enough electricity to power half of Bangalore. I’m quietly smug when it tells me that my current usage is equivalent to 31p a day, and on the war path when it tells me the next bill will be more than the mortgage. In short, I’m a changed woman.

This is a long way round of pointing out that this little device has made me both aware of the energy I’m using, and it has altered my behaviour. I’m no longer tolerant of absent-mindedness when it comes to turning out lights - sort of scary as it means I am turning into my father.

It’s an effective little device that is saving me money, and reducing the need to generate unnecessary electricity across the country. In fact, it’s a real life performance management device for the home, where performance = saving money. And a great demonstration of how simply being aware of the numbers improves performance. It works in the home, and it works in business.

It also made me wonder how much more electricity or gas we could save if we had smart meters. Meters located in the home, rather than some cold inaccessible place, that told us how much we are spending.

Status codes at Terminal 5

We are all used to status codes – they are not exactly new. En e-mail may be sent, received, read or flagged for follow-up. A training course may be archived, current or planned. I could go on – most business software will use status codes in some form or another. They convey relevant and pre-selected information about whatever it is you are tracking. So far, so unexciting.

I did see some neat status codes over the weekend at a very swish place called Heathrow Terminal 5. It was my first visit to this lovely new terminal which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

I was impressed: imposing architecture, systems that appeared to work well, and lots of showers for little people. Actually I think they were fountains but I suspect they will be very popular as showers as the weather gets hotter. It’s the first thing you want to do when you get off a plane, isn’t it?

Back to status codes - vital at the airport. I was in arrivals – the time shown on the board could be: estimated or actual. An additional status code showed when bags were being unloaded – now that's useful.

What really impressed me about these status codes however, was the board next to it. It had helpful information like the amount of time you should expect to wait for someone once the aircraft has landed. How long it takes for someone with or without a bag to get to the arrivals hall – now that’s not just useful, it’s actually helpful. It’s not rocket science, but it is thoughtful and genuinely helpful.
Of course it was a sunny Sunday and the incoming flight was on time. The arrivals hall wasn’t too crowded and I suspect the systems weren’t being stressed too much.

It is when it all goes wrong that people and systems come together to make decisions and ensure boards such as these give genuinely helpful information, and T5 has some making up to do in that department.

However, for the 95% of the time that things go well it’s an improvement on what I’ve seen before. And an interesting way to think about status codes – maybe they are a little too pithy sometimes?

Outliers

How can a book about statistics be so interesting? Malcolm Gladwell of Blink and Tipping Point fame has written a fascinating book about why some people are successful and some are not. I’ve just finished reading this meandering but gripping account of why where you come from is important. Your birthday, birth year, home town, and parents’ socio-economic group all influence your chances of success in life. Not rocket science you might think – well, read the book, it certainly challenged some of my beliefs about how things operate.

Of course, he does cherry-pick his examples: the Beatles, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs are all lives that have been well documented. But equally he challenges some deeply held treasured myths: that it’s not just intrinsic talent, but also hard work that sorts the millionaires from the benefit recipients.

His description of KIPP made me late for work this morning. “Work hard. Be nice.” it says on their web site – and hard work is exactly what is turning around the lives of disadvantaged children. Through their own grit and determination, led by an inspiring and visionary program, over 16,000 US students now have a chance of higher education and a better life. The secret? Start school earlier, finish later, do more homework and take less holidays. Genius!

Gladwell also points to Ericsson’ research on Expertise and Expert performance – another great interest of mine. It turns out our great violinists, pianists, chess players and others are in fact those who have practiced the most. They also happen to be very talented, but they have to put the hours in like everyone else.

I have a perverse interest in statistics, and expertise, despite its apparent dryness. This book brings both subjects to life in a way that I can only envy. Data visualization using words, beautifully done.

6 things that seem to be true

1. Measurement improves understanding: in business, and in life.



2. Working with smart people is a joy, which is why I’m such a happy person.
   
   
3. Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people. I wish I had written that, but I didn’t: Frederick Lewis Allen did. I think he has a point.
   
   
4. Measure what matters, measure what you can manage; otherwise don’t measure it. More complicated than it looks - see (1), (2) and (3) above.



5. Effective data visualisation is worth a thousand pie charts.
   


6. I have not seen any problem, however, complicated, which, when looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. Apparently Paul Anderson said that in the New Scientist in 1967. He must have been a systems analyst too.

How do you measure innovation?

A frequent criticism of performance management and measurement is that it stifles creativity. Intuitively we believe this to be true – innovative endeavours cannot be time-boxed or benchmarked. That, we argue, is the nature of innovation.

On Saturday evening, however, I had the pleasure of witnessing a ballet performance that was both innovative and measurably excellent.

Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of Swan Lake was horrifyingly original and spectacularly successful. I say horrifyingly because this was Swan Lake – the perennial favourite of ballet lovers everywhere. The one classical ballet that pretty much guarantees the crowds. So it is a brave choreographer who messes with Swan Lake.

Northern Ballet, however, are unafraid of tackling large and contemporary topics with their dance.

They are gritty, humorous, and the very best of what you might expect from the North.

Their Swan Lake managed to pull off the seemingly impossible. They found heartbreak and depths of emotion in Tchaikovsky’s music through the storyline rather than pirouettes. Their athletic male dancers replaced the prettiness of the swans’ tutus but left no-one short changed. The final scene had us transported to a world only rarely glimpsed. And when the final curtain fell the audience was so caught up in the sheer drama of what they had just seen that no one could remember what the original Swan Lake was all about.

But how do you measure something as emotional and innovative as this? By the number of seats sold for the performance? By the rapturous applause? By the loud and unmistakably male northern voice behind me that pronounced “that were brilliant!” as the curtain fell. I guess all of this, and more.

Northern Ballet Theatre like any other business is accountable both commercially and artistically. In their 40th Anniversary year they are going from strength with glowing critical acclaim and performances in more theatres throughout the UK. But in this business, as in any other, the numbers matter. Whilst the numbers can only mirror the brilliance of their current artistic director, David Nixon, and not replace it, they are nonetheless important in securing funding and ensuring more people get to appreciate the power of dance.

The numbers also speak volumes about the standards that the artistic team set for their dancers and their company. Alongside Opera North this is another northern gem that is hitting well above its weight.

I’d wager seats in the stalls that both companies keep more than half an eye on their performance management statistics, silencing any critics who say that measurement stifles creativity.

6 ways to improve data presentations

Business communications often include data: amounts that are quantifiable to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy. Quantifying things goes to the very heart of what a business does – generating sales, maximising profits, inputting inputs, delivering outputs, measuring response rates / interest rates / business rates. Little gets changed unless the benefits can be quantified.

Using relevant data in your pitch can make a case more strongly than just words ever could: providing you get it right. Too often we spend time gathering the data, then fling it together the night before hoping that the “figures will speak for themselves”. Well they might – if everyone was awake to hear them.

In any presentation you are looking for that “ah-ha” moment. The point where individually and collectively your audience think to themselves:

NOW I see the problem! How long has THIS been going on?

THERE is the opportunity! How come we didn’t see THAT before?
THIS is what we have to fix. Let’s get a project manager onto it!
THAT is what we need to improve! And fast – this could be important …

Putting together a presentation with that kind of power and persuasion will ensure backing for your proposition and make life a whole lot easier.

But how do you do it?

1. Figure out what you want your audience to do as a result of your presentation. Then work back from the end point.

2. Use data that is relevant, credible, and supports your message. If it has deficiencies, decide whether they are important and whether better data is available. Show your data sources, admit deficiencies, and make recommendations based on the picture as you see it.

3. Interrogate the data until YOU understand what it means. Numbers represent things – behaviours, estimates of behaviours, actual or imagined sales, whatever. Understand the numbers, ask the data difficult questions, and consider the probability of your numbers being right.

4. How can you present the data to communicate the message? Consider graphs, timelines, maps, diagrams or symbols that let the data tell a story. Do you need the actual figures to support a graphic? Do you need a graphic at all? Where should your “ah-ha” moments show up?

5. Stand back and squint. Through half closed eyes you will see the patterns in the data and the graphic. What does it communicate from a distance? Consider the order of your data to ensure it shows your audience what you want them to see.

6. Edit, revise and amend until the data is convincing. Only then add the words.

Then enjoy the ah-ha’s as they ripple round the room.

As I drove to work this morning I heard an interview on the radio about a public services reform report. The organisation that had produced the report was asked, very reasonably, what data it was that supported their recommendations. “Oh, a study done some years ago” was the quick response before she swiftly moved on to other points. It was a far from convincing reply which the presenter kindly did not press. It left me feeling that this report did not stand up to scrutiny, and that the organisation had missed a big opportunity.

Manage your message with conditional formatting

30 years ago Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston developed VisiCalc - the world’s first electronic spreadsheet. The basic idea of a spreadsheet hasn’t changed much since, but the functionality has improved enormously. From SuperCalc to Lotus 1-2-3 and then Excel, the spreadsheet has been an immoveable favourite on our desktops.

But as revolutionary as VisiCalc was, it was only when the spreadsheet started to get visual that it went mainstream. Charting, graphing, plotting and showing data as pictures moved the spreadsheet out of the accountant’s office and into the marketing department, and indeed most other departments.

Numbers were talking a language that people could understand.

Conditional formatting

Microsoft Excel 2007 is the latest in a long and increasingly useful line of wonder-spreadsheets. The oh-so-easy-to-use Conditional Formatting in Excel does a great deal more than Microsoft could ever fit on the box.

It is no exaggeration to say that Excel is the world’s leading Business Intelligence tool.

Anyone faced with a screen full of figures can now quickly and intelligently make sense of them. And I mean quickly. Conditional formatting is perhaps more useful as a personal sense-making tool. With a click and a sweep coloured bars show you how big the big things are and how small the small things are. I could have said that the coloured bars show you how big the big NUMBERS are and how small the small NUMBERS are, but numbers represent things: sales, people, widgets, cases, key words.

So what these graphical bars are really telling us is where the problems and opportunities are: where we should direct our energies, or who we should pick the phone up to first.
Conditional formatting tells us what’s important and where we can leave well alone.

Conditional formatting is also a great presentation tool. It enables figures and graphics to be reported in one hit – a weakness of the traditional graph. Although graphs and charts are worth a thousand words, they also needed a table below it to enable the full story to be communicated. Conditional formatting allows both actual numbers, and the visual representation, to be reported together in a very compact space. Ideal for busy managers, complex reports, and for simply getting an important message across.

Key word visualisation

Consider the key words for this blog. Each time I do a posting the numbers increment on the key words, and new ones get added. After a few postings the numbers start to build. Put conditional formatting against those numbers and they look totally different.

I begin to see areas that perhaps should be more central to my blogging, and are presently being ignored. I’m not particularly surprised by some, but importantly I start to look at the key words differently.

Visualisation is not neutral

Interestingly, the two types of conditional formatting in this example also make me look at the numbers in a different way. With the yellow bars I see a continuum – more of some and less of others. With the traffic light flags I see “high performing” key words and “poorly performing” keywords. They are the same key words, the same numbers, and it’s the same person looking at the data – I just draw different conclusions. If I were using this to explain performance, I would need to think carefully about the presentation.

What we measure gets attention, and what we show visually gets us thinking in new ways about what we are doing. As the power of visuals improves in spreadsheets, so does our ability to demonstrate a particular angle of what we want the reader to understand. It’s something to think about when presenting information, and when consuming it.

Seven principles of performance management

Whatever you are trying to achieve – whether individually, as a team, or a business, there are seven basic principles which will get you there faster.

1. Success you can measure
2. Agreed plan
3. Binary milestones
4. Metrics for everything
5. Visible and visual progress
6. Regular reviews
7. Recognise achievements

Success you can measure
I’m not sure you can beat SMART goals. Specific, measureable, agreed, realistic and timed. This avoids SNAFU: Situation Normal – All Fouled Up. Seriously though, SMART goals are not new, just rarely found in the workplace. The reason you don’t see too many SMART goals around is that they are hard work. Woolly goals are much easier, and because you haven’t agreed them, they are also easy to forget when it all goes wrong. The initial up-front effort with a SMART goal sets the whole achievement thing off to a flying start.

I also like SMARTER goals – specific, measureable, agreed, realised, timed, ethical and recorded. Ethical should be a given, and recorded is a good reminder. Make the goal visible – and if it’s important, record it somewhere people will see it.

Agreed plan
A measureable and clearly defined outcome starts the planning process. Figure out the activities changes that need to be made en route to the goal. There are a bundle of complaints against planning: it takes time, stuff happens that you hadn’t thought of, work expands to fill the time allowed, etc. None of these are good enough reasons not to have a plan. The level of detail will be different according to circumstances, but you must have enough planning done to be able to see your way to achieving your goal.

Binary milestones
Milestones have either been met or they haven’t. ‘Nuff said. And if they haven’t been met, then they need to be. Either in parallel with other tasks or before you move on. Binary milestones rock!

Metrics for everything
In the short time I have been blogging on performance management and business intelligence the whole issue of metrics has caused a thunderstorm in an eggcup. “You can’t manage through measurement” has been the cry “management is about people.” Well, no and yes. You can and must manage through measurement, and yes, absolutely it’s all about people. And people need to know what standard is expected of them. How many, how much, what time, how long, how deep …

Lord Kelvin is famous, amongst other things, for saying that “if you can not measure it, you cannot improve it.” In business, as in science, that is true.

He also said “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible” but, hey, you can’t be too hard on a guy that contributed so much to what so many of us understand so little of; except physics students, of course.

Visible & visual progress
Making progress visual and visible is a cornerstone of performance management. And the more creative and fun you can make it, the better. Measuring progress, in the true sense of measurement, and showing it graphically, has an almost magical effect.

Remember the Blue Peter appeals for stamps, scrap metal, woollies, and other stuff that kids could send in? Remember also the bright and massively visual ways they had of showing how they were doing? Colours, bells, lights, giant post boxes, it was all there in the studio. It worked then and it works now.

Regular reviews
You’ve created your goals, got your plan with binary milestones, are measuring everything in sight, and showing it visually. A couple more ingredients are needed to stop those charts flat-lining: reviews and determination.

Things don’t always go the way we want. So we have to adjust and re-think. Review regularly with analysis of the metrics and informed ideas to adjust the plan. Trying to adjust without analysis is called guessing. Determination is required to work through the analysis, figure out new solutions, and test ideas until those beautiful visual charts start perking up.

Recognise achievements
Working through problems, finding solutions, and making plans takes considerable effort, often for prolonged lengths of time. The metrics tell you how well you are doing, and they also tell you when its time to take the team out to dinner. Recognising achievements, celebrating successes is motivating and necessary to keep everyone on board.

Seven steps that will help you make a success at just about anything. None of them are original, all of them are tried and tested, and all of them work. Now the bad news – they all take effort: a lot of effort. That’s why success isn’t a given, and why riches don’t just tumble from the skies. The seven steps won’t guarantee riches either, but they will improve the odds.

Count what you can manage

Numbers improve creativity

As an avid reader, and a loyal follower of Mariella Frostup’s Book Show, I am fascinated with how authors produce their work.

What strikes me about authors’ working habits is how often numbers occur in answer to interviewer’s questions about how they produce their books. Writing is a creative process – yet authors appear to be methodical and systematic.

In his book ‘On Writing’, Stephen King says that he writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays. I wonder whether my idea of a holiday is the same as Mr King's, but his disclosure is nonetheless impressive.

Here are some comments made by the Book Show guests about how they work:

“I can really focus and just get on with writing my 1,000 words. Then I get to spend the rest of the day playing with the babies…” Jenny Colgan (best selling chick-lit author, mother, and blogger extraordinaire)

“I always start the day by going into my office at about nine o’clock. This is where I work on my four books a year. When I’m writing a book, I write about 3,000 to 4,000 words a day; I don’t really have to think about what’s going to happen in the books: it just seems to come from my subconscious mind. I write for two to three hours and then I come out of the ‘trance’, as it were.” Alexander McCall Smith author of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency

“My working day starts at about 2.30pm and continues on through to half past six or seven o’clock, when I stop because I’m knackered.” William Boyd – prize winning author and film writer

“I’ve got these files here and then I’ve got my marvellous patterned notebooks. I’m absolutely devoted to them. I must have about 200 by now, ‘cause I do about 20 for each subject.” Lady Antonia Fraser – historical biographer

J G Ballard, who wrote the cult novel ‘Crash’ was reported in The Times as saying:

“I try to write about 1,000 words a day in longhand and then edit it very carefully later before I type if out. I have been known to stop in the middle of a sentence sometimes when I've reached my limit. But self-discipline is enormously important; you can't rely on inspiration or a novel would take ten years.”

Performance management in action

This is Performance Management in action. The numbers – whether the hours they work, the number of words or pages they write, or the research notebooks filled – are part of the creative process.

Of course the numbers themselves don’t make the stories more gripping or their characters more life-like. They don’t compensate for poor grammar, or improve their spelling. But they do allow the authors to improve all of these things by the regular, systematic, and consistent application of their creative energies.

The numbers enable these authors to manage their creativity. They are conscious of when is the best time of day to write. They understand their own personal balance between targeting a number of words, and keeping up the quality of what they write. They set their own targets with words, pages and books –authors’ equivalent of a KPI.

Best selling lessons for business

All the authors I’ve quoted are best-selling authors. By literary and commercial standards they are successful. Their scorecards are filled with the number of words they write each day, the number of hours they work, how they edit, their research notebooks, and how they get started when faced with a blank sheet of paper. The book sales then follow.

In contrast, business people often start with the sales figures. “This year we are targeting sales of the XYZ product to be 1,000 units a month …” Business scorecards are filled with sales revenue and profit targets. Whilst these figures absolutely have their place, they are not the figures that business managers are actually able to manage. What we can manage is the efficiency with which we produce our products or services. We can decrease defects, or increase features. We can improve distribution or marketing communications, etc.

Metrics for creative types

The concept of applying “cold, hard numbers” to creative processes such as man management or writing isn’t intuitive. Metrics appear too stark, too simple and don’t convey the ambiguities of day to day business or the plot of a novel.

In reality they convey a great deal. The writer knows that a day that produced 1,000 words is moving them closer to their finished book – even if they eventually have to re-write every word.

Equally, successful managers think carefully about the key metrics in their business, and then ensure they are monitored and improved regularly. Because of course that’s the whole point. By creating targets and measuring the key parts of the process we are able to improve on what we do: improve the process, and the deliverables. Clever people, authors.