I am a pet person. One of my many pet peeves is the word “metrics.” The concept is fine, but the perceptions surrounding it are maddening. This comes to mind today because of a recent thread at SWJ that links to a post about “metrics” on one of the blogosphere’s largest methane factories. Basically, people are once again talking about metrics as if they are some magical list of standards that we can substitute for solid campaign planning.
I do not know a clear way to explain why brainstorming a list of metrics is stupid, so I will attempt to illustrate it instead. I no longer have a stack of doctrinal publications or written procedures or class materials at the ready that I used to rely on when doing things like putting together MOPs and MOEs, but I think my memory serves me relatively well, so here goes.
First off, “metrics” or Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) are exactly what they sounds like: a measure of whether your efforts are effective. They are not measures of whether you are “winning” and may not be measures of whether things have improved for the population or whether your situation is any less dire. Here is an example…
Scenario: Suppose you want to clear an area that is currently regarded as a Taliban safe haven. You want to push the Taliban out of the area without inflicting civilian casualties or doing significant damage to whatever infrastructure is there. In pursuit of that goal, you attempt to get the Taliban to vacate before you move in.
One part of your concept of operations: As a shaping operation, you seek to get the Taliban to leave by way of information operations that seek to make your imminent movement into the area well-known and creating the impression that the Taliban will suffer greater public relations harm than good if they choose to stay and fight. In order to convince the Taliban that staying and fighting will do more harm than good, you decide to create an impression that the locals will blame the Taliban for any death or destruction to the locale if fighting occurs.
Your specific objectives in pursuit of shaping those perceptions…
1) Inform Taliban decision-makers of your imminent movement into the locale
2) Inform Taliban of your intent to seize control of the locale
3) Inform the local populace of your imminent operation
4) Convince populace that Coalition forces will not target non-combatants or infrastructure
5) Convince populace if Taliban fights then collateral damage will be unavoidable
6) Convince Taliban decision makers that collateral damage will be publicized as effective anti-Taliban propaganda
7) Convince Taliban that preparation and resourcing of the operation will be sufficient that any fighting will be lopsided and embarrassing
8) Inform civilian population of where to go to evacuate if Taliban remain to fight
Now, for the sake of brevity, I’ll only expand upon the first objective, though I think it is worth noting that some of the actions below apply to multiple objectives.
Objective 1: Inform Taliban decision-makers of your imminent movement into the locale
Actions: Inform the media of your movement, broadcast warnings via radio, inform individuals known to travel to and from the locale
Measures of Performance: Number of news outlets informed and the amount of coverage that they devote to the information by way of the relevant conduits; number of radio spots aired and their durations and area of coverage; number of relevant individuals spoken to
Measures of Effectiveness: Amount of accurate information relayed through the media to your target audience; number of radio spots heard by your target audience; portion of the populace that has heard accurate information relayed to them through individuals whom you spoke to; amount of inaccurate (corrupted or distorted) information that reaches your target audience. See footnote.
Now, I was never much of a doctrine geek and it has been a couple of years, so I might have omitted a step or substituted “inform” somewhere in lieu of “influence” but the basic point is this: your MoE (or “metrics”) are derived from the specific actions that you intend to take in pursuit of your objectives. Your metrics are not some “best practices” list that you copied from your buddy’s notepad or got forwarded to you in some PowerPoint slides. Metrics are operation-specific and only make sense in the context of that operation. This nonsense that I have seen lately about coming up with a list of good metrics is maddening. If we learn as slowly as some reporters, bloggers, and other commentators suggest we do, then we truly are screwed.
Important note! In addition to developing a set of MoE based upon your objectives and actions, you also need to determine in advance how you will measure your MoE. Why? Because there is a human tendency to become wedded to our plans and ideas. You need to determine objective means of measuring MoE so that, in the heat of the moment, staff officers and Soldiers collecting information and intelligence will not be as likely to subconsciously skew the data. If the commander is expecting some type of input and gets some other type, then he can ask why the new type of input. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe it's a new input that does a better job of fitting the facts to the outcome sought. If it is determined in advance how you intend to measure the MoE, then the commander can determine whether the change makes sense or whether you his staff is cooking the books.