You jump on the scale, and you watch the dial rise. It stops, and you are amazed. I lost weight. Well done to you! What did you learn from this one measure? Did it inform you that in the past month you have not exercised and much of your muscle is now fat, which lays less? Or that in the past two days, you are dehydrated, hence the accompanying headaches?
We choose convenient measures, but in truth, they can be misleading. Your weight measures one element: your weight. It is not an indicator of your health, fitness, or wellbeing. To determine those, you would need to collect a different set of measures.
What we choose as the measure of success will become our focus. While simple metrics are helpful and are an indicator, they may not provide an accurate assessment of performance or status. Your bank balance does not reflect your net worth nor declining income. The people you serve today do not indicate overall satisfaction or the likelihood they will return.
We choose the most straightforward and most convenient measures for those very reasons. If we prefer to assess progress and growth accurately, a more thoughtful reflection of the metrics we choose is necessary since those will dictate our ongoing focus and behaviors. What did you learn from the scale today?
