Instruments before incentives
If you can measure it on the same cadence everywhere, you can improve it everywhere.
Before you can align anyone, you have to be able to see the same thing they see.
So we make a business legible before we try to improve it — the same line items, the same definitions, the same cadence, regardless of how it was acquired. Incentives follow measurement; they cannot precede it.
If you can measure it the same way in every business you hold, you can improve it in every business you hold. That is the whole of the idea, and most of the work.
— The full essay is to follow.