“Unless you know where you are going any road will take you there,” Theodore Leavitt
We all understand the importance of goals, purpose and direction in establishing commitment, success, teamwork and coordination. Somehow, between that understanding and the execution, things go awry. Two different examples will illustrate success, failure and the importance of goals and measurement.
One of the key mantras of success of a relatively new industry, direct marketing, has been the focus on setting goals and measurement. Next to “crackberries” Google Analytics has probably been next most addictive business tool. With that and other direct marketing tools, you can instantly measure and observe results. The complexity and results of measuring sales, response rates, paths, cost per order, click through rates, page views, etc is impressive and can be done on a daily or hourly basis.
The technology and structure of this business accommodate this type of goal setting and measurement. Even in this industry goals and measurement can become complex. Terms like lifetime value, competing tradeoffs, multiple causes etc. all can make goals and measurement more complex.
However, compare this to the medical profession and others and the difficulties are obvious. While doctors struggle with life and death decisions every day there is little guidance on goals, costs, or probabilities. In particular, differing circumstances such as age, pain, quality of life frequently seem secondary in these discussions. Most important efforts to establish real health criteria or measurement except in experimental situations are still fairly crude. Most of the data still lies only in individual doctor’s written manila folders rather than usable databases. Everyone agrees and tests have proven that medical databases dramatically improve health care and reduce costs. Yet there is little major effort underway to make this effort universal.
