To thine own self be true

Postal regulator Postcomm says 92.5% of first class post should be delivered the next day. Royal Mail hasn't met this target for years.

In 2004 the Royal Mail scrapped its second daily delivery and restructured its distribution to cut costs. Staff levels have been slashed to return the group to profit after years of losses. Now they're also under pressure to drastically improve service reliability.

Last December the Royal Mail explained that, in the two weeks before Christmas, next day deliveries of first class mail usually drop to about 70%. According to the Royal Mail that's ok because Christmas is an unusual period so it would skew the figures. And because they don't include it in their Quality of Service figures the Royal Mail is able to show its performance as acceptable.

Because it suited them, the Royal Mail changed the basis on which they measured their performance. It just goes what you can do when you decide what you want to measure. Even the Government does it in a variety of ways, setting a bad example and a dangerous precedent for those of us who are content to see what we want to see.

How many of us at some time been tempted to change the goal posts in customer satisfaction or key performance indicators (KPIs)? There are results that make us feel good, or are easy to measure - and then there are the results our customers re whose post is late or unreliable what they think about the Royal Mail's measurements - they won't be impressed.

It doesn't matter whether you're the Royal Mail, a building materials supplier, a builders' merchant or anyone else in business. what counts is honesty: with your customers and yourself. No matter how good it makes you feel, self-delusion will eventually catch you out.

William Shakespeare wrote "to thine own self be true". In management we're all familiar with the saying: what gets measured gets done. Make sure you measure the right things.