How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business

Very few experts actually measure their performance over time, and they tend to summarize their memories with anecdotes. They are right sometimes and wrong sometimes, but the anecdotes they remember tend to be more flattering to them.

Instead of being overwhelmed by the apparent uncertainty in such a problem, start to ask what things about it you do know.

A problem well stated is a problem half solved

One example is how Amazon.com provides free gift wrapping in order to help track which books are purchased as gifts. At one point Amazon was not tracking the number of items sold as gifts; the company added the gift-wrapping feature to be able to track it. Another example is how consumers are given coupons so retailers can see, among other things,

If you know almost nothing, almost anything will tell you something.

If a measurement matters at all, it is because it must have some conceivable effect on decisions and behaviour. If we can't identify a decision that could be affected by a proposed measurement and how it could change those decisions, then the measurement simply has no value