How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business

This book thoroughly debunks the idea that some things cannot be measured.

The principal problem is that when people think of measurement, they think of precision. If they cannot think of a way to measure something precisely, then they think the thing cannot be measured. By letting go of of this attachment to precision one finds that there are lots of ways that things can be measure that provide tremendously useful information. In most cases some rough measurements will reduce considerable uncertainty, and greatly improve decision making.

Warning. While this is a great book, it's hard to follow math on an audiobook. I'm glad I read it, but I wish I'd been using my eyes rather than my ears on this one.

Full of practical guidance accompanied by insights from theory and experience, this book is essential for any analysts (or manager) interested in truly measuring everything they want to measure now, but simply do not know how. This book will not help those looking for a way to defend "intangible" characteristics, but will focus the willing on asking the right questions the right way to reduce uncertainty and make better decisions. As a professional analyst myself, I have used many of the techniques outlined in this book – though I did come up with some of them on my own, years before I read this book — and I find myself revisiting it periodically.

This book has changed the way I think about my life and my business. Since reading this book my head has been filled with ideas for quantifying and measuring everything. Not everything should be measured... but after reading this you'll start to believe that anything can be measured.

Also wanted to mention that since listening to this book I have picked up 'Pulse' by the same author. It was also a good book, but not quite to the level of 'How to Measure Anything' IMHO.

Great book. Immediately applicable to my job. recommend for managers looking to measure intangibles when doing business cases.

For sure I will listen to it again to capture the finer points of the arguments made as some of them are requires a return to the math of my high school and college years.

My job resolves to a large degree around being able to assist my business stakeholders with identifying opportunities and risk and being able to quantify these in business cases. And in that light, this book was a very welcomed input to that work which in many case can be quite frustrating when it comes to the so called "intangibles".

I don't know any that does when it comes to an approach based on mathematics and statistics

This was the first of David Drummond's performances I've hear, but he did very well.

It's a book on mathematics and statistics, so feelings are not the focus, but yes it was in general very encouraging to realize that it is actually possible to get a grip on things that seem quite elusive.

The author explains how even a little information can dramatically lower your uncertainty.

The jelly bean experiment where he asks people to give a 90% confidence level of the average weight of a jelly bean. After giving the weight of only one bean, everyone was able to dramatically narrow their estimate. Great stuff.

No way. It is too dense and too long.

The equations are difficult to follow in audio format.

The book is indepth, highly technical and constantly referring to a good amount of numbers. At first, I would rewind to cross check and try to understand the tabulation and processes involved, then I stopped doing that thinking I would just learn and try to have a high level understanding, then I quit as the audio content faded into background noise.

No.