Measure What Matters

In this weeks reading of Measure What Matters, chapter eleven covers a great seven steps to measure crises and trust.  Along with these seven steps, it seeks to answer questions such as:

·      Have the behaviors, programs, and activities implemented change what people know, think, and feel about the organization?

·      Have the actions or behaviors of the organization had an effect on the trust that constituencies feel toward the organization?

·      Have the public relations and communications efforts that were initiated to build trust had an effect?

Now that you have seen what questions need to be answered when there are crises or trust issues within a company, lets go over the seven steps to measure crises and trust.

Step One: Define a Specific Desired Outcome from the Crisis.

Once you survive the crisis, have a plan of attack to build back. Make sure that everyone can agree on the same plan as well. Whatever it is that your company comes up with as a plan, just know that your competitors are hoping you fail so bounce back as strong as possible.

Step Two: Define Your Audiences and What You Want Your Relationships to Be with Each One.

Once you figure out who you want to interact with as a company, it is very important to establish how close you want to be with them. In business there is a lot of things that should be kept secret and its important for your connections to know that.

Step Three: Define Your Benchmark.

It is very important as a company to set goals and reach them to the best of the companies ability. Set goals that will put you above and beyond your competitors.

Step Four: Define Your Measurement Criteria.

This section is tough because it will be hard for someone to measure the effectiveness of anything without first figuring out exactly what it is they are measuring. This section gave us an example of the typical performance indicators.

·      Percent increase in trust scores.

·      Percent of coverage containing key messages.

·      Share of desirable versus undesirable coverage.

Step Five: Select a Measurement Tool.

There is no one, measurement tool you can rely on for every time of evaluation you need done. There are many different kinds to choose from to ensure you are using the best method possible. Listed below are some measurement tools that can be used.

·      Surveys

·      Focus groups

·      Before-and-after polls

·      Ethnographic studies

·      Experimental and quasi-experimental designs

·      Model building

Step Six: Analyze Results, Glean Insight, and Make Actionable Recommendations.

In the step before this you were to select a measurement tool to collect data. This step is the part when you take all of the data you collected and you analyze it. This is the most important part of any type of research you ever do. Once you analyze the data, make recommendations of what you could do as a company to get better.

Step Seven: Make Changes and Measure Again.

Once you analyze the data, go back and make changes to things you think can be improved. After that, the cycle starts over and you measure again and find new data to work with.