The review with no number

The National Day review happens this week, and there is no number in it for the thing the post was made for.

Tuesday was the day. By this morning the deck exists: reach, views, shares, the comment count, last year's post, three competitors. All of it real, none of it the question. The post had one job, to say that the company belongs here, and belonging has no column.

So the review does what every review does when the thing being measured has no dashboard. It becomes a review of who liked it.

The country manager liked it. The agency loved it, which is what agencies do on Sundays. Someone senior found the music too loud. Within twenty minutes the loudest opinion in the room is the result, and the result gets typed into a report as though a measurement had taken place.

This is the politics of measurement at their purest. When there is a number, the argument is about the number. When there is no number, the argument is about status, and the person with the most of it wins by default. Nobody decided this. It is what a meeting does when it has nothing to hold on to.

The honest version asks two questions no report can carry.

Was anyone Saudi in the building proud of it? Not polite about it. Proud. Did they send it to someone without being asked?

And did a customer mention it, unprompted, in a message, at the counter, in a review, on a delivery note? A comment under the post does not count; the post asked for that. A mention somewhere the company was not looking does.

Both have answers. Neither is on a dashboard. They are answered by asking, one person at a time, before the loudest opinion in the room gets there first.