Learn the work behind the metric

Growth · Little Light original

A number changes on the monthly report, and the meeting quickly forms a story around it. Revenue rose because the strategy worked. Costs increased because the team was careless. Delivery slowed because people need to move faster. The explanation may be convenient, but the number cannot tell you what happened on its own. Follow it back to the work. Speak with the person who enters the order, answers the customer, reviews the claim, or fixes the exception. Look for the policy change, the unusual case, the manual step, or the quiet improvement hidden inside the total. The purpose is not to distrust the report. It is to understand the human and operational reality the report has compressed. Leaders make better decisions when they can move between the summary and the ground beneath it. A metric helps you notice where to look. Respect it enough to investigate, and respect the people enough not to turn its first movement into a verdict on their effort.

Little Light