Raspberry Jam and the Cost of Measurement

I liked Chris Bolton’s way of talking about the cost of measurement (and the cost of not measuring things). He uses a letter written and sent to the British Foreign Office in London by the Duke of Wellington in 1812. At the time Wellington was marching towards Madrid with his army, trying to rid Spain of the French and defeat Napoleon. He’d been asked to effectively do an audit to account for all of the resources under his command. Clearly he thought that there were more important things he should be doing, noting with delicious sarcasm about the ‘hideous confusion’ concerning the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one regiment during a sandstorm. Wellington says that he can drive Napoleon’s forces out of Spain or he can measure and account for everything that he does but he can’t do both:

Source: Center for Global Development. Andrew Natsios 2010

Wellington makes his point well but Chris counterbalances this with an example of what can happen when we don’t account for things well (the eye-watering amounts in Covid-related fraud that have been written-off by the UK government). He stresses the need for what he calls the ‘Goldilocks zone of measurement’ (not too much, not too little, but just about right). Which is a bit like the ‘goldilocks zone’ of investment.

Like many things, a sensible approach to measurement is not a binary choice between two extremes but a balance based on understanding some useful inputs. Chris suggests that these should include the degree to which measuring something will help a team to achieve it’s objectives, considering whether the effort and resources that are being put into measuring things are proportional to the scale and risk involved, and what the measurement activity actually costs.

The point is a very valid one. Measurement is not a neutral activity and yet the costs of measuring (in time, money and resources) are rarely considered. Measuring things is clearly an important activity but when businesses become slightly obsessed with it it can often come at the expense of actually doing things.