Gotta have numbers to measure success

If an organization's use of the wrong numbers,or its erroneous use of the right numbers, can do enormous damage, it is equally true that no organization can succeed without using numbers to judge its success. Numbers may not tell the whole story, but they tell part of the story in a way that words alone cannot, even in organizations for which profit is not a performance goal. Attendance at church services is certainly not a complete measure of the spiritual health of a congregation, but it is an essential number for the parish leaders to know.

Charles O. Rossotti, Many Unhappy Returns: One Man's Quest to Turn Around the Most Unpopular Organization in America (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005), p. 111.