It’s Independence Day weekend (as I write this) — a perfect time to talk about … Hmmm. Like maybe …
How awful most sequels are? Business tie-in: Special effects without plot are like IT without business purpose.
Nah.
The need for cap gun control, and how to make it constitutional?
Oh, don’t be that way. Click on the link. I’m not trying to take your guns away. I could probably stretch for a connection to information security. But probably not.
Hey, I know. Ridiculing New Jersey used to be a popular pastime. In this anti-political-correctness age, maybe it’s time to resurrect it.
Here we go.
New Jersey has won the national Worst Roads in the U.S.A. sweepstakes. How bad are they? New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has declared a state of emergency, because, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers as reported in The Washington Post, “… 42 percent of New Jersey’s roadway system is ‘deficient.’ Traffic jams cost the state $5.2 billion annually, or $861 per driver. And potholes, bumps, and otherwise poorly-maintained roads cost each New Jersey driver nearly $2,000 a year in increased vehicle maintenance fees.” And New Jersey’s transportation trust fund is empty.
New Jersey’s gas tax is second-lowest in the U.S.A (after Alaska). And yet, Chris Christie and the New Jersey legislature are in full agreement that a gas tax increase isn’t going to happen.
The fun part, and the tie-in: More New Jersey citizens are against a gas tax increase than favor one too, even though $200 per year in additional gas taxes would save an average New Jersey driver … let’s see, carry the one … make it $2,600 or so annually.
The problem: Not one New Jersey driver would be able to tell you when and in what form he or she saved it.
That’s right: In KJR-land, Independence Day is the perfect time to talk about metrics.
Because this is, deep at its core, a metrics story. Everything else is detail. Here’s why and why it matters.
Regular KJR readers might, if they stayed awake long enough, recall the four metrics fallacies:
- Measuring the right things wrong.
- Measuring the wrong things, right or wrong.
- Failing to measure things that are important.
- Extending business metrics to individual employees.
As is so often the case, Fallacy #3 is New Jersey’s root cause (in my not particularly humble opinion, supported by not one single piece of objective evidence, so sue me).
See, everyone’s tax burden is right there, in your face. A gas tax increase would be immediately apparent to every driver every time he or she fills the tank (insert teenager joke here).
Your tax burden is measured, in your face, and, all other things being equal, nearly everyone agrees which direction they’d like it to go (down, in case you weren’t sure). Nobody wants to pay higher taxes just because they like the experience.
What you get for paying your taxes, or, in the case of New Jersey’s roads, don’t get in exchange for not paying enough of them? That’s arguably more important, and yet it’s fair to say the value received from government in exchange for our taxes is completely and thoroughly unmeasured.
Anything you don’t measure you don’t get.
In business we have a metric called GS&A — general, sales, and administrative expense. It’s a fee business units pay to the mother ship in exchange for being owned by the mother ship. Most business unit heads call it a tax and resent paying it, because it detracts from their bottom-line financial performance.
Think any of them have access to the metric Financial Value Received In Exchange for GS&A? Maybe, but I’ve never seen it.
Way back when, in the early days of business consulting when Total Quality Management was all the rage, TQM’s gurus explained that while quality’s costs were obvious and apparent, it’s value was much higher than its costs, even though its value was nearly impossible to measure.
In the realm of Information Technology we all know the importance of good technical architecture — it’s the difference between a given change in functionality turning into a modest-sized one-person enhancement versus it requiring a project team and a few months to take care of.
All of these cases, and more besides have this one thing in common: Their costs are easy to measure, and to see. Their benefits are neither.
And anything you don’t measure you don’t get.
