“I was very worried when an insider was chosen as the new CEO. I was especially worried when suboptimal execution continued: missed delivery dates, buggy products, weak marketing.” The Rise And Fall of BlackBerry: An Oral History. Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec 9, 2013.

The product looks like management. Therefore, when management changes, we can see if anything is different by looking at the results. Sounds simple, right?

Often, industries, organizations, and companies have normal ups and downs. We have to sort out what is a normal variation in the business cycle (or our success on projects) and what is actually due to good or bad management.

Check out Ya Gotta Know What Is Normal

I’d often ask myself, after we’ve been more successful than we’ve been in the past, what would someone on the outside looking in think of our success? Would it look like a success, or would touting it as a success just bring laughter from an outsider? Often on the road to improvement, major painful improvements don’t look like much and are only stepping stones to real eventual improvements.

Being objective in our planning, tracking and reporting allowed us to tell the difference between noise and real changes. Ultimately, however, just standing back and looking at what is going on objectively is one of the best ways to tell how an organization is doing.

For more see how to Eliminate Your Project Management Honesty Buffers

How do you tell if something is getting better or if you are just continuing to make ineffective changes?