‘Oh, oh, oh!’ shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it off. ‘My finger’s bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!’
Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears.
‘What is the matter?’ she said, as soon as there was a chance of making herself heard. ‘Have you pricked your finger?’
‘I haven’t pricked it yet,’ the Queen said, ‘but I soon shall—oh, oh, oh!’
Through the Looking-Glass, Ch. V. Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
There is a belief that there are two types of indicators – leading and lagging. In this line of thinking, lagging indicators tell us about what has already happened, and leading indicators would predict what will happen in the future.
But just like the Queen in Wonderland can’t start bleeding before she pricks her finger, you can’t measure something before it happens. In reality, all measurements are lagging indicators. This causes confusion among managers trying to design performance management systems.
I propose using two different terms: outcome and activity measurements, especially when measuring business processes.
Outcome measurements would be very similar to lagging indicators – they measure the outcome of the process. Did the process meet expectations?
Activity measurements measure what we do – in other words, they measure the actual activity undertaken by the actors in the process.
Here’s an example. A customer service ticketing process may want to resolve tickets in 3 days. An outcome indicator may be the percentage of tickets resolved in 3 days. Activity indicators may be the number of tickets responded to, or the length of time between ticket replies.
If you find yourself stuck when determining leading and lagging indicators, try using the terms activity and outcome instead.
