Laws of Leadership: Pearson's Law

Have you noticed how much better a team's processes look on audit day? If we can run the way we're supposed to on audit day, why can't we just do it right every day?

Pearson's Law: "When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates."

This one is critical in maintaining any systemic function of a team. If it needs to happen, someone needs to be checking.

If you want that process followed diligently, record the results of that check and submit it up.

This is how improvement and change are driven. Pearson's law describes the simplest function to get a person (and, by extension an organization) to choose to do something the way you want it done.

You have to check repeatedly, and report.

Your first level of metrics in any organization SHOULD be measurements of how well your processes are understood and followed. You should be auditing every member on your team and asking them, "how do you do it, do you do it, and why do you do it,” repetitively to see if they know and follow their procedures. Then retrain when the answer is, "I don't know.”

A simple database and conversational audit system where a team member talks to each employee daily with rotating questions will give you a basis for this. Then you build audits based on things that are found to go wrong.

Added note, this auditing person, (if the audits are built for process checks based on actual weaknesses and failures in the operation), will become a true process expert across all functions and will build a relationship with every employee who follows defined standards. This is the ULTIMATE supervisor prep job.

If you do this, your people will learn their procedures, follow them, and your gaps will be identified so they can be closed.

You can create a lot of burnout trying to implement change without good process adherence checks. If you don't check, your people won't change.

The best designed process on Earth will fail unless people understand and follow it diligently.

Leading change is hard. Understanding Pearson's Law helps us build systems that work.

Change leadership is a marathon. You can't improve what you don't measure, or you simply won't succeed.