Why is that? Because the typical “we need a business case to justify measuring that” almost always gets in the way except for the most obvious financial or obligatory measures. Cycle times for a critical process? Average transaction distance for orders? Velocity of inventory turns? These kids of measures often fall by the wayside.

There is no excuse for NOT measuring all kinds of vital signs these days because measurement of business activity is “nearly” free given our sunk costs in enterprise systems over the last decade. Adding that next metric should be a matter of a 1 hour configuration exercise within the enterprise system. If it isn’t, there is something seriously wrong with your systems (and you’ve got bigger problems than the extent of measurement).

If you buy my argument that measurement is free and my follow up argument that storage is nearly free, then we should be measuring all kinds of things that make sense but don’t necessarily have direct application today. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had about creating simulation models with companies where someone says, “we don’t typically track that so we don’t have historical data to give you”. That’s bad, really bad …and you should be ashamed if this is happening to you.

Try this exercise – pick 5 random metrics that aren’t the obvious ones but make good business sense and ask if anyone is tracking them and if so where the data goes. If you get a “no” then get IT to estimate how long/how many resources it would take to start that tracking. The answers to these questions would be very illuminating.

I once knew a scientist who recorded every single computer keystroke he made over a 10 year period. “I might find that useful one day” was his answer when asked why. That’s a very common mentality among scientists – one that businesses should adopt if they want to understand the underlying “calculus” of their companies better.

A big part of being a smart company in the modern age is to stop being stupid.