Very early on in our consulting work with clients we recognised that one of the biggest reasons for the failure of innovation (or resilience building) projects was that the wrong metrics and measures were being used. This is another failing of our vertically siloed world – the people tasked with making measurements are almost never the same people as the one that need to use the measurements. Consequently, most enterprises measure what’s expedient to measure rather than what’s important.

This mistake causes enormous Law Of Unintended Consequence damage not just to those enterprises, but to Society at large. As we predicted, for example, the 17 UNESCO Strategic Development Goals – all defined with the best of intentions to improve the world – have, in all 17 cases, made matters worse.

Firmly in the ‘someone, somewhere already solved your problem’ ethos, we know that there are ways to measure whatever needs to be measured. All that’s required is some ingenuity, some lateral thinking, an ability to connect the dots, (probably) have some IT skills, and a large dose of determination to not give up until you’ve found and validated ways to measure what is needed.

Sometimes this doesn’t make us popular with leaders (‘what if this shows that I’m the problem’), but we’d rather be unpopular (and not get the job) than contribute to the Law Of Unintended Consequences.

Whatever needs to be known can be measured. No exceptions. Test us.