There once was a business owner who was interviewing people for a division manager position. He decided to hire person who could answer the question "How much is 2+2?"

The engineer pulled out his slide rule and shuffled it back and forth, and finally announced, "It lies between 3.98 and 4.02."

The mathematician said, "In two hours I can demonstrate it equals 4 with the following short proof."

The social worker said, "I don't know the answer, but I a glad that we discussed this important question.

The attorney stated, "In the case of Svenson vs. the State, 2+2 was declared to be 4."

The trader asked, "Are you buying or selling?"

The accountant looked at the business owner for a moment. He got out of his chair, went to see if anyone was listening at the door, then went to the window and pulled the drapes closed.

Returning to the business owner, the accountant slowly leaned across the desk and said in a low voice:

"What would you like it to be?"
In business metrics are very important but they should always be seen as help to understand the means and to reach the goals, not as the mean and the goal itself bar the very basic ones as ROI, ROCE etc. Accounting & Controlling are surprisingly interesting fields with often most revealing and shocking findings. I remember how a board of a European company in which I wanted to invest quite some money offered an interest free 1 million € loan to it's members backed by the value of the convertible bond for which that offer was reserved. Getting the whole bond on less then 30 cents on the € was quite a business with that loaned money, considering the bonds shot up to 110 cents a year later and hover still above the 100 cents. Nice but of course like with options that loan was not listed among the expenses... Shareholder money is clearly interest-free and dilution is an imagined problem


In the military training the proper use of metrics should be much more difficult to implement then in business. The big problem of a heavy reliance are the big incentives to game the system, training for the score and 'making it work' to earn the benefits.