85 of 126

Measurement

Measurement must be one of the most obsessively applied and deeply misunderstood activities in existence.

Measuring a distance or the height of a pyramid is perfectly straightforward and easy to apply. Measuring how much money you make from selling things is also pretty easy.

Measuring anything that is easily defined in units of one type or another is simple.

But when you start trying to measure the things that have profound effects, it suddenly all gets a lot trickier.

How do you measure loyalty or enthusiasm, insight or intuition?

When you consider that it isn’t possible to measure anything without the act of measuring changing it, you suddenly realize there is an awful lot more to the whole business than the foot rule suggests.

Because the measures you choose will affect what you measure, they define what value is; they embed assumptions about how things work. And the most common assumption they embed is a linear causal relationship in which neither the measurement nor the measurer is involved.

Any measurement has to be carefully developed with intuitive insight into what is being measured and how the act of measurement will help create it, like a snake eating its tail.

Or, as I like to say, “the power of anything is equal to the inverse square of how easy it is to measure”.

When you measure, you carve reality, carve carefully and along the grain.