Managers carefully assess what they will measure and how they define it. At Sprint . Nextel Corporation, a new CEO discovered that the company was struggling because managers were measuring the wrong things. For example, managers in the customer care department focused on metrics that controlled costs but didn’t solve problems. Consequently, Sprint had a terrible customer service reputation, was losing customers, and wasn’t meeting its financial targets. When Dan Hesse came on board as CEO, he told managers to stop worrying about how long it took for a care agent to handle a call and start focusing on how effectively the agent solved the customer’s problem. Before long, Sprint had moved way up in the consumer satisfaction ratings and was adding new customers.13 In the auto industry, crash test ratings provide a standard of performance established by the National Highway. Traffic Safety Administration. When crash test ratings are below standard, managers rethink design and manufacturing processes to improve crash test results. For pharmaceutical companies such as Wyeth, getting more productivity from research and development is a top priority, so Wyeth sets targets and measures how many compounds move forward at each stage of the drug-development process. Managers at most companies, like Wyeth and Sprint Nextel, use a number of different operational metrics to track performance and control the organization rather than rely on financial measures alone. They track metrics in such areas as customer satisfaction, product quality, employee commitment and turnover, operational performance, innovation, and corporate social responsibility, for example, as well as financial results.