Advice for the Bosses -- DeWese

They wanted to use a term that implied mystery, difficulty and superior intellect. After all, not everybody can create strategy. Just about anybody with any walking around sense, however, can figure out how to get from point A to point B.

The same is true for the popular and abused word "metrics." Those who use it imply that they know some magic I don't know. When I got my MBA there were no metrics. There were numbers on the balance sheet. There were margins on the income statement. There were some ratios, like current ratio and debt-to-equity ratio. Whenever I hear someone tell me they are using advanced metrics as one of their strategic initiatives, I get nervous. No, I meant to say nauseous.