On Metrics and Acumen: A Letter to the Editor

In response to “Are Metrics Blinding our Perception?”a recent column in the New York Times by Anand Giridharadas, Acumen Fund CIO Brian Trelstad wrote the following letter to the editor.

Dear Editor,

Your piece on the rise of metrics, and the risks of being too metrics focused, was terrific. As the person that declared World Metrics Day on June 16th, I share the author’s perspective that metrics can be valuable, but that they have limits. But for too long, philanthropists have failed to generate any meaningful metrics that can be used to complement our professional understanding of what is working, and what is not. Those of us in the business of providing capital to businesses that combat poverty have an even greater need to measure the social efficacy of t he businesses we support.

Professional intuition that goes too long unexposed to metrics that can help complement the story fosters a guild mentality where only the “experts” know what is best. Metrics without judgment is automation; judgment without metrics is either expertise… or guesswork. (See Pinker vs. Gladwell from the NYT Book Review for further discussion). What we need are more leaders who marry both the relevant metrics with intuition to inform our experiences and help us learn from those experiences, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The art of measurement, is in knowing which measures to select (and not just one, as our global obsession with the almighty GDP may be leading us to a crisis of global environmental proportions), when to look at them, and what decisions to make based on the data and our experience. And by the second World Metrics Day in June 2010, we hope to see a 17% increase in the number of people marrying metrics and judgment to make better decisions!

Best,

Brian Trelstad