Truthtellers to the Rescue

Most managers live and die by their numbers. Whether you are a manager or an analyst who supports one, chances are you inherited a set of metrics by which to judge the performance of your department/project. Maybe you even have a bonus structure based on these metrics.

But ask yourself this question: do you really understand where your metrics come from? Because most people just accept their reports as gospel (after all, they are very official-looking) without understanding the underlying sources, calculations, transformations and definitions that result in one little, innocuous-looking number.

For example, when you’re counting “sales,” are sales from a new client different from sales generated by an existing client? If so, how do you define a new client? (DM Review’s article "Do Your Metrics Lie?" gives a great example of just such a scenario.) Do you count sales differently from how the finance department counts sales? (Careful: the answer to that question could impact your bonus!) When your boss is comparing sales from your department to sales from your peers’ departments, are they all being counted the same? Or maybe you have different systems that were developed as different markets emerged and each one counts sales differently.

I know you want to report the Truth, because the Truth will set you free. The Truth will show the world that you’re the best, ass-kickin’-est manager ever. The Truth will MAKE YOU the best, because it will enable you to manage what is really going on in the world. So if there’s one thing you’re going to be at the end of the day, it’s a Truthteller.

So what’s a Truthteller to do? First, find out who’s generating those reports. There is underlying code somewhere that defines what ends up on your (and your boss’) desktop every morning. Second, figure out whether it says what you think it says. Maybe you can read the code and figure that out. I’m guessing not. Does your company keep current metadata? If so, that’s an excellent place to start. If not (and many companies don’t) you’ll have to find a sympathetic developer to unravel the spaghetti and figure out where your numbers are coming from.

A better solution? If your company has a data warehouse and business intelligence tools, maybe you can easily create a report yourself and see if it matches the canned report your boss is looking at. If not, use your research as a jumping off point to get your metrics more in line with what’s really going on in your business.