In both The World Crisis (Churchill’s history of the Great War) and The Second World War Churchill repeatedly quantified the nature of the challenges they faced and the successes they achieved.
He noted for example, the ratio of armaments the opposing sides possessed, the number of tons of shipping that monthly got through the German U-boats to Britain as compared to the tonnage necessary to keep Britain fed and fighting, and the ratio of the actual production of important war materials, and strategic materials such as tin and aluminum, as compared to the requirements of production to meet war needs.
Churchill’s quantities and comparisons use the once common practice of citing ratios, which strikes modern readers as odd and makes comparisons difficult. For example, he might have written “We were outnumbered in aircraft by a ratio of thirteen to seven, though we were building more new aircraft by a ratio of seven to five.” Today, of course, we would say “They had nearly 90% more aircraft than we, although our production rate for new aircraft was 40% higher,” which is, of course, much more useable information.
What is truly odd by comparison is how few managers or leaders make any measures at all. People like to talk about holding people accountable, but they don’t actually measure anything. They have no objective measures against which to hold people accountable.
The measures don’t have to be anything fancy. For example, if you are running a hotel with a restaurant and banquet rooms, you should know that the dishwasher racks can hold 18 dinner plates and the dishwasher cycle takes one minute twenty seconds. This is very basic information, easily obtained, and doesn’t change from day to day.
Knowing this information, you can know that, if you have a banquet for 180 guests, washing the dishes for the main course is going to require ten racks of dishes to be run through the dishwasher, which should take about 15 minutes. Knowing this, you will have some objective measure of how well the hotel/restaurant staff and systems are performing, and you can discover and fix things that aren’t working. But it all starts with measuring things objectively. It’s shocking how few people measure the simplest things.
Measure a lot of things, and have something to compare them to.
More Leadership Lessons from Winston Churchill:
Listen.
Ask questions.
Give clear directions.
Don’t get angry at challenges to your ideas. Learn from them.
In most cases, it isn’t the person, it’s the process.
Learn to think in terms of a system.
Go and see for yourself.
Measure a lot of things, and have something to compare them to.
Have courage. Tell the truth, and expect others to do the same.
Great oratory is built on great arguments. Master your facts and your arguments first.
Copyright 2015, 2018 by Paul G. Spring. All rights reserved.