You don’t have a performance problem. You have a measurement problem. I hear teams talk about tech debt. Some talk about org debt. But almost no one talks about measurement debt, and it's killing performance. What is measurement debt? It's the accumulated cost of not having clear or reliable metrics. Here's how it shows up: - Conflicting reports from different teams - Gut-based decisions because “the data isn’t reliable” - Weekly firefighting over what to prioritize - Wasted time building dashboards no one trusts You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you definitely can’t improve or scale it. How does this happen? - Metrics aren’t clearly defined. - Teams use different tools or sources of truth - No one owns reporting, so everyone makes their own - Data gets manipulated - Vanity metrics thrive As companies grow, the cost of measurement debt compounds. You can fake alignment for a while, but sooner or later the strategy stalls, teams pull in different directions, and leaders make high-stakes decisions in a fog. And suddenly, performance dips. But no one "knows" why. How to fix it? Define metrics and measurements like you would a product: - Every metric should have a clear definition and owner - Create one source of truth - Consolidate dashboards and reporting into shared systems - Treat data like infrastructure Invest in it early. Revisit often. Make it part of how you operate, not an afterthought. Make reporting useful. If no one uses it to make decisions, it’s just noise. Measurement debt doesn’t show up on the balance sheet. But it hits your bottom line just the same. Are you carrying invisible debt in your metrics stack? Now might be the time to pay it down.
