I apologize in advance to any reader who anticipated a thrilling tale of me eating 10 lbs worth of hot dogs in under a minute. Unfortunately, this is not that story. I do believe, however, that I learned just as important a lesson as if I had.
A Matter of Scale
It was a beautiful spring morning when a new bathroom scale arrived on our doorstep. Real glass, classy design, BMI/fat/water readings, mobile app—all the things you could ever want from a 21st century bathroom scale. My wife and I had suspected that the old one gathering dust in our bathroom cupboard was becoming increasingly less reliable, and it was high time to upgrade.
We lifted it from Amazon's
smiling packaging, set it up, did one last courtesy weigh on the old scale, and stepped onto the smooth surface of the new one for the first time, metal inserts under our feet reading our BMI like a palmist foretelling our fate.
My wife's eyebrows furrowed in dismay as she looked down at the digital display, the numbers mirrored on the product's app. When my turn came, I soon discovered why: 10 lbs above what I was expecting to see! 10 lbs from the time I had stepped off the old scale and onto the new.
I had to be sure—I snatched up a dumbbell from the other room, weighed the thing multiple times, calibrated the scale, and otherwise attempted to maintain the illusion that this scale, too, was wrong.
It wasn't.
My positive body image had already been slowly deteriorating over the years since the beginnings of fatherhood, and I grew consistently disappointed about what I saw on the old scale, but this was a decent blow to the system. Throughout most of my life, keeping weight down was never a concern; if anything, I had to work really hard to gain any weight at all, and that had only come through spending hours at the gym.
Had I actually gained 10 lbs in as many seconds? Obviously not. I had simply received updated and more reliable data. And we had suspected that our old scale was wrong. So why was I still so shocked? Not only was I above my ideal weight, but this new information brought about the understanding that where I stood on the weight spectrum was significantly different than I thought!
When we align how we measure, what we measure, and why we're measuring it at all, we're enabled to meet our goals, and have all the more advantage in our pursuits as organizations and as individuals.
Reliable Perspective
I didn't blame the new scale. All it had done was tell the truth, relayed the facts. It was my own perceptions and shortcomings (fed by unreliable data) that were suddenly brought to the surface, all because we had made the decision to change the source of that truth to a more reliable instrument.
Again, my wife and I had suspected that we weren't getting the full story from our old scale. We knew that there was a real possibility that we were not going to like what we saw when we first stepped onto our shiny new delivery that day.
But, for all the anticipation, subsequent disappointment, and instant regret at our caloric choices over the past few years, I couldn't help but feel an underlying sense of gratitude. Because worse than all of those emotions was the feeling of uncertainty that had served as context for each encounter with our old scale over the previous months. At least now we knew. And with that knowledge came the certainty that we could proceed in our lives with more accurate data informing our lifestyle decisions.
The Lesson
It was just 10 lbs., I know. That's not life-changing news—we've had much worse. But the lesson that I took away was powerful for me.
How often do I go through my day-to-day without questioning the reliability, necessity, or accuracy of the data that's presented to me? How often do I consciously take stock of the tools and resources available to me that will allow me to better collect, process, and analyze that information?
It was just 10 lbs, but what if it were something much more significant? What if a company were neglecting entire customer segments and missing out on massive revenue opportunities because they didn't have the right tool to collect that data? What if my family's finances were in utter disarray but I had no idea because I had poor financial reporting tools or my bank's website didn't give me an accurate picture of the state of our accounts? What if doctors, investigating the source of the headaches in a loved one, used out-of-date and uncalibrated machinery to do so, potentially missing or misinterpreting a mass that could indicate something much more malignant than previously thought?
I'm not saying we need to tear apart every system, re-evaluate every single tool, or throw out our current playbooks simply for the sake of investigation or doubt. Nor do I intend to sew fear and distrust into organizations, families, or individuals.
I do believe, however, that we need to be more intentional about the systems, tools, and resources that we do use, in order to ensure that we are meeting our ultimate goals and objectives.
Direction Meets Action
Those tools and systems are what enable us to measure what's most important, letting us know whether we're on the right track to meet those goals and objectives. But the data alone isn't enough.
The old adage states that information (or knowledge, depending on who you ask) is power. Implicit in that statement is the understanding that knowledge without action is powerless. The data, the knowledge, should be informing decisions, leading to action.
In the case of our shiny new scale, the new insight into our actual weight, though relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, informed our health decisions moving forward. The ROI from buying that scale didn't come just from the updated or more reliable numbers on the display, but rather from the results of the actions that those numbers informed—we chose to work out more, cut out certain things from our diet, etc.
The goal was an increased sense of physical well-being. We chose to buy a new tool to give us better insight into the data behind one of the metrics we felt were important (overall weight). And we acted on that new insight, adjusting our approach to better meet that goal.
When we align how we measure with what we measure and why we're measuring it at all, we're enabled to better meet our goals, and have all the more advantage in our pursuits as organizations and as individuals. And when the results of those measurements lead to meaningful action, that's where we see the biggest payoff.
*As always, I love to hear your thoughts. Please comment below or email me directly at brigham@techspeakconsulting.com
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