The Measurement Maven and Menace of the Month Awards

The Measurement Maven of the Month:

Kenneth Duberstein

This month's Measurement Maven, Kenneth Duberstein, is calling for a national dashboard of Key Performance Indicators. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece "1000 Points of Data," Duberstein wrote:

What we need now is a Web-based system for measuring our changing society with key national indicators — in a free, public, easy-to-use form. Ideally, it would be run by the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences, which would ensure it has the best quality of information and is kept up to date. The system would enable us to offer in one place statistical information that we spend billions of dollars collecting but that is now underused and undervalued.

Imagine everyone having at their fingertips answers to questions like: How many quality jobs are we adding to the American economy? How many more students are getting into college? How many more people are gaining access to affordable health insurance? Are we increasing economic growth along with savings and investment? Are we reducing our greenhouse gas emissions?

What a notion. A government that measures success in real terms!-- Be still my beating heart! Now, if we could just get corporations to think the same way about their PR and Communications programs! --KDP

The Measurement Menaces of the Month

People Who Rely on One Number
to Judge Success
Delivering one number will not help you keep your job. Delivering the wrong number, however, may help you lose it.

I was at a workshop yesterday at which one of my fellow panelists (who shall remain nameless) relayed that, despite the increasing diffusion of media and complexity of communicating in these times, this person's clients still needed "one number" (a.k.a. Ad Value Equivalency, or AVE) to give to their bosses to demonstrate success. This person even suggested that by not using AVEs, peoples' jobs were in jeopardy.

My initial thought was to name this person the Measurement Menace of the Month. But then I realized that he/she was just doing his/her job, promoting a number and a score that his/her firm sells. (And, believe it or not, I do understand and sympathize when a client demands one number. It puts you in a tough spot.)

In fact, the real Menaces are those corporate marketing and finance people who think that there is value in that one number and would fire someone for failing to deliver it.

Measuring the wrong thing is the fastest way to failure. Perhaps one reason that so many corporations are in trouble these days is that they have considered a PR program successful when it simply delivered a high AVE number. What about communicating messages? Consider the insurance company we worked with that consistently demonstrated ever higher AVE numbers, while their coverage turned more negative every month. Eventually, they laid off half their PR department!

Delivering one number will not help you keep your job. Delivering the wrong number, however, may help you lose it. --KDP

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