>How do you measure intangibles like knowledge or customer service or innovation? You figure out proxies as best you can. How do you know "customer service" o

>How do you measure intangibles like knowledge or customer service or innovation? You figure out proxies as best you can. How do you know "customer service" or "innovation" are important, are improving, exist, or are what you think they are, without figuring out a way to measure them? This is precisely the bane of buzzwords. "We focus on innovation here!" but no one can determine what that is or if the company is any good at it. >The tangible results of them can be measured but there are multiple variables affecting it, from politics, through skill, talent and finally luck. There are a few comments in this thread that seem to come from the same premise: that measuring is hard because "multiple variables" come into play when you measure things. I hate to break it to you, but those factors are in play whether you are measuring things or not. The purpose of measuring is to minimize the unknowns and reduce variance. All of the variety of factors that are in play in a massive organization are precisely why you need to measure things, not a reason to cast measurement aside.