Having goals, and a way to measure progress towards those goals, can help you know if you are doing the right right things that point you in the direction you desire. Simple in concept and, I hope, uncontroversial.
I will be writing soon about UUA metrics, but I have no fantasy that that subject is uncontroversial.
But it’s not all about numbers or charts. I hurt my back a couple of months ago, and my orthopedist challenged me to create metrics through a narrative of my recovery. It’s helped me put the slow improvements and little setbacks into a larger context, and it’s better that the conventional narrative: “Turn forty and begin to fall apart.”
But sometimes numbers and narrative work together and for this reason I’m putting together some 2014-15 metrics around my cultural resource goals.