What Gets Measured, Gets Managed 

Kaizen and Kaban are words that gets thrown around pretty often. 

Most of us have heard the story of Toyota, and the it's adaption into software delivery.

For those unfamiliar, Kaizen translates to 'Change' (Kai) and 'For the Better' (Zen) and Kanban is 'Visual Board' or 'Sign' 

These have become core tenants  of the Agile software delivery world yet rarely, if ever, do we take such approaches  with ourselves. 

From the Four Disciplines of Execution by Sean Covey there is one core discipline which resonates extremely strongly which is to keep a compelling scoreboard. 

If you've played a game for simply for fun (say tennis, poker or a video game) you'd play a certain way, most likely a relaxed and jovial one. 

Yet whenever someone says "Alright we're playing for real now" and introduces a scoring system, suddenly we sit up and play completely differently.  Once we're we didn't care suddenly we're focused, disciplined and competitive. 

What if instead of a game, you were scoring your daily behaviors and habits? Or progress towards your goals? 

What if you were playing to keep your streak alive? 

As Peter Drucker said "What gets measured, gets managed" 

Below is an example of my own Scoreboard I had for July 2022, which I used to track things I wanted I have more of and less of.  

I've put together a template here for anyone who wishes to make their own Scoreboard and measure their daily progress.

You do play differently if you are keeping score and if you are measuring your progress you can course correct very quickly. 

Cheers,