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Getting sucked into an endless and pointless debate is such a waste of time. It drains energies, and you lose goodwill. This leads to a loss of trust, and the downward spiral begins in the relationship.

Why do we get sucked into such debates? Here are a few reasons:

• Poor identification of priorities. Don’t you have something better to do?
• Lack of self control. Arguing just feels so good!
• Ignorance of the real issues.
• You or your co-worker may have a point, and need to be heard.

If time is money, a lot of money is being wasted in the workplace. Positions harden and conflicts escalate. Symptoms are attacked while the problem festers.

Time to market is critical. Ends are sometimes more important than means. Find a productive way of being heard. Now that is a challenge worth pursuing.

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Everyone in the workplace is moving a metric. For example, the CEO is trying to move the stock price upwards, the CFO is trying to move costs downwards.

Before you can move the metric, you have to obtain it. This “measurement” is done by specialists, or by the person who needs the metric. Sometimes this measurement is easy because self service tools are available. Think of a traffic policeman with a radar gun. Sometimes this is difficult. Think of the operations function in organizations, most of them struggle to obtain business process related metrics.

Finding the right metric will take you 80% to insight. The problem is, getting the measurement takes 80% of the time, with only 20% left for analysis, interpretation, and recommendations.

The beauty of fixing this problem is that it will reveal the improvements to be made for the metrics to be meaningful.