How Do You Measure Up?

"What gets measured, gets managed."

Are you familiar with management guru Peter Druckers's famous quote? Here's my version: measurement motivates.

That is, the simple act of paying attention to something inevitably leads to improvement in those areas - and often without noticeable effort. I love this story that Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week and himself a tracking fiend, tells about Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote.

"Phil had tried diets and exercise but it was inconvenient, it took time and he'd always regained the weight. He decided to see if there was a lazier way. He simply weighed himself every morning and created a spreadsheet with a graph in Excel. He had a slope going from where his current weight was, to his ideal weight. The graph also had a maximum allowable weight line and a minimum allowable weight. He would weigh himself and see where he was on that graph."

Guess what: Phil didn't consciously try to improve his diet or get more exercise. But the subtle effect of awareness on thousands of tiny subconscious decisions led to him losing between 30 and 50 pounds.

In Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande writes: "If you count something you find interesting, you will learn something interesting."

When he was a resident, he began counting how often surgical patients ended up with an instrument or sponge forgotten inside them. Although it didn't happen often - about one in fifteen thousand operations (phew!) - when it did, there were serious ramifications.

With a little more sophisticated tracking, Atul found that the mishaps occurred predominantly in patients undergoing emergency operations that revealed the unexpected (such as cancer when the surgeon had anticipated only appendicitis). This led him to work with some colleagues to come up with a device that could automate the tracking of sponges and instruments.

It's also important to measure something important - to you. For businesses, it may not necessarily be the bottom line. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek hares the example of Bridgeport Financial founder Christina Harbridge, who wanted to create a different kind of collections agency.

Rather than using the typical harassing tactics, she believed that people would respond positively when treated with respect and integrity. So instead of incenting employees according to the amount of money they collected, she rewarded them based on the number of thank-you notes they sent out. Ultimately, she created a culture that valued and listened to individuals - despite the fact that they owed money.

So, what are you going to track?

Productivity: How often do your team meetings start/end on time?Work-life balance: How often do you leave the office by 6:00 pm?Effectiveness: How many cold calls does it take to make an appointment?Health: How many nights do you sleep eight hours or more?Finances: How much money you spent?

Let me know how it goes. I'll be waiting to track the results!

Peak performance specialist Renita T. Kalhorn is a Juilliard-trained classical pianist with an international MBA and a first-degree martial arts black belt. Leveraging the power of "flow," she helps entrepreneurs and corporate professionals to achieve extreme focus and reach the top of their game at work. Subscribe to In The Flow, her FREE monthly newsletter and receive a complimentary copy of Find Your Flow! 21 Simple Strategies to Banish Tedium, Reduce Stress and Inspire Action at http://www.stepupyourgamenow.com/.

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