Perhaps it’s true that “not everything that counts can be counted.” But everything that can be counted should be
“Not everything that counts can be counted.” I'm not entirely sure who said this, but it's often attributed to Albert Einstein. In general, I agree with the sentiment. There are some intangible things that are difficult, if not impossible, to measure and yet have an enormous effect on whether or not we succeed. That being said, I think that sometimes people tend to use this idea as a justification for not measuring anything at all.
Perhaps “not everything that counts can be counted,” but I would argue that everything that can be counted should be counted. Specifically, as leaders in the mortgage industry, we've got to make sure we're keeping track of what's going on in our organization. We've got to make sure we're collecting the data that can be used to properly analyze our organizational success and make better decisions about the future. If we aren't measuring everything, then we can't really know whether or not we'll have all the data we need when the time comes that we've got to make one of those important decisions.
You can't measure what you don't track. This means that, if employees have goals they need to reach, then we must make sure we're tracking their progress toward those goals. Do we have employees keep to-do lists and logs of their work? Do we have project management systems that keep us on pace? If not, what's stopping us? Now more than ever, the technology exists for us to seamless collect the data we need to meaningfully analyze our progress. Let's start taking advantage of it.Related stories:
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