“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
- Albert Einstein
The Nature of value is that it is something that can be measurable. The difficulty in being a Strong Two is that often we find ourselves trying to measure how what we do contributes the bottom line. We get caught up in what Andrew Taylor described in a keynote speech to the New Jersey Theatre Alliance conference, as the Three Biases of Measurement.
The Bias of Time
Evaluation criteria and feedback measurements can often emphasize the short-term over the glacial. A continuous decision process can bias us all toward measures that move quickly, rather than those that take generations to evolve. Consider Ralph Waldo Emerson’s belief that “The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.”
The Bias of Disconnection
As we search for the measurable outcomes of our actions, it’s too easy to assume that our separate and distinct actions had the results we see in the world. In reality, meaning and value in any experience comes from a complex web of previous experiences. Our efforts and organizations are lucky if we’re just a tiny sliver of the cause behind a meaningful moment
The Bias of Utility
Acts of measurement and evaluation continually draw us back into thinking about utility, about the concrete “usefulness” of what we provide in the world. Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this tendency in his early analysis of America centuries ago. He said, “Democratic nations….will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful.”
So what do we do about these biases, and the challenge of having to measure what cannot be measured?
1) Accept that there will always be pressure to measure by time, resource & production. We will always have to be accountable at some level to how long it takes, how much it costs and if it produces the desired result, but our value to the Vision & Our Leader is immeasurable.
2) Construct measures & evaluations that grow from the vision, purpose, and our internal compass. These measures must be established in a way that encourages our work, rather then diffuse & distract it.
3) Remember that the measurables are not the goal. The vision is the goal. It’s important to watch for the footprints of what we do, but they are only footprints. It’s easy to forget about the giant that left them there.
