Why This Law Exists
Activity and historical measures are necessary but insufficient. Mature executive metrics explain outcomes, reveal causes, show trends, anticipate conditions, trigger action, and connect performance to customer, workforce, financial, risk, and enterprise value.
Executive Standard
Progress measurement from describe to diagnose, predict, prescribe, and improve. Retain a metric only while it materially improves understanding, accountability, prediction, decisions, action, or enterprise value.
Required Leadership Behaviors
- Design measures backward from decisions and enterprise outcomes.
- Balance leading, current-state, and lagging indicators.
- Require context, cause, owner, action, timing, risk, and expected recovery for material variance.
- Retire or redesign metrics that no longer change leadership behavior.
Evidence of Maturity
- Dashboards emphasize decisions and material exceptions.
- Leading indicators provide time for intervention.
- Measures expose transferred cost, risk, and customer impact.
- Metric reviews result in coaching, barrier removal, decisions, or learning.
Failure Signals
More data but no better decisions; red/amber/green reporting without context; activity celebrated while outcomes weaken; measures persist after strategy and operations change.
Executive Reflection