What are you trying to accomplish?

December 26, 2024

Love seeing "management" drivel debunked. Anyone who's spent any serious time in big corporate knows the mindnumbing pursuit of metrics as its own function and purpose. It's anathema to ever question why something is being measured or why a piece of data is being collected. The overwhelming presumption is that once something is measured it must continue to be, as an almost obsessive compulsive exercise.

The cost, as anyone who's bought Splunk knows, runs into astronomical quickly. The benefits, presented as self-explanatorily obvious, are frequently anything but. Yet, round and round the wheel goes as we try to measure everything everywhere all at once.

In my practice we like to ask, "what are you trying to accomplish by doing this?"

First principles thinking, currently en vogue thanks to Musk's open embrace of the concept, boiled down, is just that.

If you're collecting to collect, stop it. If you can't tell who, why, where, when, and how will be using the data you're about to collect - either raw, processed, digested, or distilled into analysis insights and intelligence, then stop and figure it out until you know.

Otherwise, you're wasting effort and resources.