Interview question: "What are your metrics?"

Let us say you walk into a company for a visit and it turns into a job interview.  During this time you assess the company, their goals, and how they measure performance.  So you ask, "what are the company metrics?"  You expect to hear “on time delivery”, “30 day warranty service”, perhaps “12 month warranty service”, and many others.  What do you think when you hear your potential employer state, “we do not operate like that, we are different”?

My first thought would have been, “okay, we are in trouble here”.  The company is successful, is known for quality which you pay a slight premium for, has been around for almost a century and a half, and has a range of employees from those with a lot of white hair to those perhaps just out of college.  And note, there is a strong correlation as to the older you are at this company to the years of service with this company.

This morning I read a LinkedIn forum discussion created by Pedro Burgos who linked a YouTube video of Dr. Deming that was made in 1984.  The title, “The 5 Deadly Diseases”.  Anything I write at this point will only dilute the message, so I apologize for not having a greater insight.  I strongly recommend you view it.  It answers the question posed above, in that you need to build quality more than reading it in charts and reports.

Obviously you still need to back check performance of the system with numbers.  You do not want to wake up one day and find you went in the red and are closing the doors.  However, it is just that, a back check.  Knowing you need to satisfy the customer by providing a quality product, service, or information is at the forefront.  Having targets to back check are at the end.  In the middle is control of the process that was planned when you selected the type of product, service, or information to meet the customers, needs-wants-desires.

So, to say the company does not have metrics may be correct, and also incorrect.  They may not have the traditional metrics people work to meet, setting up silo processes of “I made my numbers”.  However, the metric that counts, that grows the business, is customer satisfaction, building quality as defined by the customer, then following up (back checking) that you indeed succeeded in customer satisfaction.  And of course continually improve.