If It's Not Measured, It Doesn't Matter
Law 2: Provide Measurements
In 2003, I was all of 26 years old, tasked with a store that no one expected much from. It was in an uninspiring location with a long history of stagnant growth. The largest jewelry chain in the US had it off as average. My job was simply to put out the fires that previous management created and regain its stability.
In a rousing display of what I believe was his version of motivation, the VP told me I would never promote out of that store because it would never do more than a million dollars a year. He was trying to encourage me to relocate.
In less than three years, that store did over three-and-a-half million and he was slapping me on the back and buying me drinks at the after-party. Just one hour earlier, I walked across stage to accept the award for Manager of the Year with him standing beside the President and CEO. After that, I could write my own ticket.
One of the most important things I did was this: I made the core metrics of success visible. Not buried in a system. Not sent in an email that nobody reads. Not hidden in a dashboard you have to log into.
I made them impossible to ignore.
Here’s what happened.
Building the Scoreboard
There were lots of numbers to manage in that store. But there were five key standards that actually drove the business. Those five were what every associate was held accountable to, every day.
These were the daily behaviors and results that made or broke our success. If those five were healthy, the store was healthy. If those five suffered, the store suffered.
Corporate already sent out daily reports in an email. The data was there. Every associate could log into the system, pull their numbers, and see how they were doing.
They did… most of the time.
Today, everybody brags about their apps and automated reports. “We’ve got a real-time dashboard,” they say. Back then, we didn’t have modern apps, but we had our version of the same thing—electronic reports, easy to access, easy to ignore, and just as invisible in practice as most dashboards are today.
That wasn’t good enough for me. I took a different approach.
Every day, I printed those numbers. Then I edited them. I stripped off every piece of useless information. No clutter. No filler. Just the five drivers, clean and clear, for each associate.
Then I went one step further.
I circled the wins. The places where their metrics were at or above goal. I wrote a brief note of encouragement to celebrate their success.
On the areas where they were behind, I did the math for them. It communicated “Here’s what you need to do today to get back on track.”
At the top of each sheet, I wrote a simple score: five out of five, four out of five, whatever the truth was that day.
I taped those sheets to the break room door. Then something magical happened.
Impossible to Ignore
But first, why the door? Because that’s where everyone looked…
When they came in for the day.
When they went back for lunch.
When they grabbed supplies.
When they left to go home.
You could not walk in or out of that break room without seeing your name and your five numbers.
There’s something different about a physical sheet of paper in your path. You can’t scroll past it. You don’t have to click or login to anything. It’s just there, in your way, real and unavoidable.
The magic was that all day long, associates would open that door just to check the sheet.
After a sale they’d check, “How much more do I need?”
They’d get a credit application and then go see how close they were to their target.
They knew exactly where they stood, all day, every day.
They knew the game. They knew the score. They knew exactly what they needed to do to win.
And here’s the deeper cut you’ll miss if you’re not paying attention. Those sheets did more than show them their numbers. They showed them that I saw their numbers.
I didn’t just set standards and walk away. I circled their wins. I wrote down their gaps. I left a short, specific note when they were doing well. That told them three important things:
This work matters.
Someone is paying attention.
Their effort and progress are seen.
That is the heart of real accountability. Not threats of firing. Not punishments or write-ups. The simple fact that your work is noticed.
And this isn’t just in the negative sense. It’s even more powerful in the positive sense. Somebody notices when you’re succeeding. Somebody notices when you’re putting in the effort.
And not just “somebody.” The boss.
People care a lot more than they admit about whether their boss sees them doing a good job. When you invest a few seconds in their victories and their challenges, you send a message that runs far deeper than any motivational speech: I see you. I know where you’re winning. I know where you’re behind. And I care enough to help you close the gap.
That combination—clear numbers, physical visibility, and seen effort—is rocket fuel for performance.
What Most Managers Get Wrong
Here’s how it usually looks:
Reports go out in email or live in a dashboard nobody opens.
There are way too many metrics. Ten, twenty, sometimes more. Nobody is sure what really matters.
The “scoreboard” changes constantly, depending on the crisis of the week.
People learn to read primarily one thing: the boss’s mood.
So, on paper, the team is “data-driven.” In reality, they’re flying blind and reacting to whoever is the most stressed that day.
When you do that, you send a very clear message: none of this really matters. If it mattered, it would be clear. It would be consistent. It would be prominent.
The numbers become a postmortem, not a guide.
If It’s Not Measured, It Doesn’t Matter
That’s the phrase I want in your head. Not as a slogan. As a diagnostic.
If you claim something is important, how are you measuring it? Where does your team see that number? How often? What happens when it moves up or down?
If the answer is, “We don’t really track it,” or “Well, it’s in this report,” then you’ve already told them what they need to know: This is optional. This is nice-to-have. This is not what you really get judged on.
Think back to Law 1—clear expectations. Expectations without measurement are just wishes. You can tell someone all day what good looks like. But if they can’t see a number that shows whether they’re actually hitting it, the expectation has no grounding. It’s open to interpretation. It’s not real.
Measurement is how you make expectations real. It’s how you say: This is what success actually looks like. This is what I’m paying you to achieve. And here’s how we’re keeping score.
You are paying people to solve specific problems and produce specific outcomes. Measurement is how you show them exactly what those are, day after day.
How to Build Your Scoreboard
1. Pick your drivers
Start with the core outcome your business lives or dies on. For a retail store, it’s revenue. For a service team, it’s response time, resolution, and retention. For operations, it’s throughput and quality. For creative or project work, it’s on-time delivery, client acceptance, and rework rate.
Then ask: what three to five metrics or behaviors truly drive that outcome?
Not everything you could track. Just the few that actually move the needle.
If you go much beyond five, you’re kidding yourself. Beyond that, focus dilutes. It scatters. What truly matters gets lost. Human attention has limits. People cannot focus on ten daily priorities. Something will give, and it’ll probably be the one you actually care about.
2. Decide how you’ll measure each one
Some drivers are system-based: sales dollars, number of transactions, appointments booked, tickets closed. Those are straightforward. Pull them from your systems daily.
Others are behavior-based: coaching conversations held, follow-ups completed, safety checks done, proposals reviewed. Those don’t live in a system. They demand observation or simple tracking.
You decide: Who’s tracking this? How? A log? A daily report? A spot check?
Before you put something on the scoreboard, you know exactly how you’re gathering that data. You know who owns it. And you know it’s accurate.
3. Make the numbers unavoidable
This is where most leaders fail.
They think “availability” is enough. “Well, the numbers are in the system if they want to see them.”
You need unavoidable.
A physical board in the work area. A printed sheet on the door everyone uses. A digital post in the one channel everyone checks at the start of the day. A TV in the office that updates at shift change.
The method doesn’t matter. The visibility does.
It updates at the same time, every day. Ideally before people start their day.
4. Add human attention to the numbers
The paper on the door mattered. But the pen marks mattered more.
That did two things:
First, it turned numbers into action: “Here’s exactly what you need today.”
Second, it turned measurement into recognition: “I see what you did.”
This is where accountability stops being about fear and becomes about pride. People push themselves harder when they feel seen and supported.
You don’t need to write paragraphs. A word or two is enough:
Wow!
Awesome Improvement!
Just 2 away!
That’s more than leadership. That’s stewardship. This is how you forge performance instead of just demanding it.
What Changes When You Do This
That once average, chaotic store did not become a top performer because the location magically improved or because the team suddenly got more talented… although in time they did.
It turned because:
I locked on the few metrics that actually mattered.
I built a simple, reliable way to measure them.
I put those numbers where nobody could avoid seeing them.
And I layered real human attention on top of the scoreboard.
The result was focus. Excitement. Ownership.
People knew what was expected. They knew where they stood. They knew what today’s work needed to be. And they knew their effort didn’t go unnoticed.
That’s what measurement does. It’s not punishment. It’s not pressure for its own sake. It’s clarity. It’s fairness. It’s the difference between playing a game where you understand the rules and the score and fumbling in the dark hoping the boss is happy.
If it’s not measured, it doesn’t matter. So if something matters to your business, measure it. Make it tangible. Put it right in front of their eyes. Add your marks to show you see them.
Then watch who steps up to play when the game is finally visible.
Stop torching people. Start forging them.