Skilled Cyber, John Ruffner
Two Watches – Metrics, Process and Operational Maturity
July 14, 2018
New Canaan was funny place to grow up in the 60’s and 70’s. There were crazy opportunities for us. We grew up around the titans of industry. In 1976 in high school we were regularly grilled the elite management of many fortune 500 companies as we waited for our date to come downstairs. It was great training for us.
But, this story is really about two watches I own. The first is my father’s, and the second, my wife gave me over 25 years later.
You see, after college I went to work with my father. He introduced me to his metrics spreadsheets. One for each business would tell him everything he needed to know tell him about the health of each business. The finances, Sales, and manufacturing. What was working and what was not.
Two years into working with my dad he experienced a massive stroke which forced his early retirement. I learned a lot about planning. His plan was for me to assume leadership of his businesses it didn’t account for his early departure.
I left dad’s companies when he was forced to retire and started my own career. I became President of an electronic hand-tool company. We manufactured in China just in time for delivery to hardware stores in the US, Europe and Asia. We learned how to be big with just 7 employees. We had our processes down pat.
I became Chief Financial Officer of a Medical device company that discovered I had Von willow Brand disease. The labs guys did that over pizza lunch. The local hospital took months and many vials of blood. The value of metrics and process became personal to me.
October 1995. My wife left me. A few days later my dad came to visit – he never did that. Just two days later he passed away. The following week I was on a business trip but when I got home I found the company I was working for was being reorganized and I was out of a job. That night, I let me cat in and something just wasn’t right. I put him to sleep the next morning. There were still a few days left in the month.
I received my dad’s watch not long after that. But, time stopped for me. I stopped wearing a watch. I took the clocks away from the house. Those personal metrics didn’t matter to me anymore.
A bit later I was hired as the Chief Financial Officer at a Consumer Electronics company. There were many unwritten rules of behavior. To function without a watch, before cell phones were everywhere, I developed my own processes and procedures to make sure I wasn’t late.
Eventually, I met the woman of my dreams. It took her a few years to realize I wasn’t interested in time the way everyone else was. She decided that I needed a new watch. The first one I graciously accepted but never wore. A few years later she tried another new watch. This time She gave it to me on my
birthday, the anniversary of my father’s stroke more than 25 years before. I’m wearing that watch now. My personal metrics mattered again.
During those 25 years I studied a lot of process and procedure. My own and others.
I know that process and metrics are tied tightly together. Combine process and metrics together with a business plan and you have a recipe for scaling a business.
Everyone has process only a few track real operational metrics. The magic happens when you evaluate your process against those who do it the best.
Metrics monitor your results. Those who evolve their practices and monitor their metrics, transform their operational maturity and create a strategic weapon out of their business process.
At tools 4 Data we manage your information technology and keep it secure but we focus on your operational maturity. Our process develops your metrics, evolves your process and creates your strategic weapon.
Thank you
