The Figure That Travels Without Its Definition
A percentage detaches from its definition in about three handoffs. What arrives at the board is a number nobody can reconstruct.
A utilisation figure is produced in one place and read in several, and the definition does not travel with it. By the third handoff the number is a bare percentage and the assumptions behind it are gone.
The measure discussed in “The Figure That Travels Without Its Definition” becomes more credible when its source records are timely and reviewable. A professional-services team assessing open the detailed feature information for monitask pricing can connect time with projects and work categories, while documenting the definition separately so the dashboard does not silently decide what utilisation means.
That is the mechanism behind most of the arguments a firm has about this measure, and it has nothing to do with the arithmetic.
As a separate benchmark for “The Figure That Travels Without Its Definition”, see Asana work-management resources. External guidance is most useful when it prompts a specific check rather than replacing case-by-case judgement.
The first handoff
A practice manager pulls hours from the timesheet system. They know what they included: client codes, excluding codes 900 and up, over contracted hours less leave.
They put 78 per cent in an email. The email contains the number and not the three decisions.
The second handoff
A department head puts 78 per cent in a slide next to four other departments' figures. Those came from four other people who each made their own three decisions.
The slide now compares five numbers that measure five slightly different things, and it looks like a table of like with like.
The third handoff
The slide goes into a board pack. The board sees 78 and asks why it is not 85. Nobody in the room can say what is in it.
Somebody is asked to find out, which takes two weeks, and by then the next pack has been produced the same way.
Why nobody notices
Because a percentage looks self-explanatory. Numbers with units invite the question "of what" and bare percentages do not.
A figure in hours — 1,412 chargeable of 1,800 available — makes the denominator visible and the question obvious.
The reconstruction test
Take last quarter's reported figure and try to rebuild it from the raw timesheet data. If it cannot be rebuilt to within a point, the definition is not written down anywhere.
Most firms fail this and are surprised by it.
What travels well
- The two raw counts, not just the ratio.
- The exclusion list, by code.
- The period and the population.
- The date the definition last changed.
Four items. They fit under the number on the same slide.
The footnote that works
One line directly beneath the figure, in the same text block, not in a separate appendix: what is in the top, what is in the bottom, what is excluded. Twenty words.
Appendices do not travel. Footnotes in the same box as the number do.
The version number
A definition that changes should change version. "Utilisation (def. 3, from April)" tells a reader that comparison with last year needs care, which a bare percentage does not.
It costs four characters and prevents an entire class of false trend.
Who should own it
One person, named, who can be asked. Not a committee and not a document.
The test is whether anybody in the firm can answer the question "who decides what counts as billable" with a name. Where they cannot, the definition will drift.
What this is not
It is not a call for a definitions project. Those produce a twelve-page standard that nobody reads and that itself fails to travel.
It is a call for the number and its definition to be the same object, so that one cannot be moved without the other.
Why the slide is the dangerous object
A table of five teams' figures implies a comparison. The implication is carried by the layout rather than by any claim in the text, and layout is not something a reader examines.
If the five numbers came from five people applying their own exclusions, the table is comparing five different measurements and looks exactly like a table that is not.
One definition applied by one person is the only thing that makes the layout honest, and it is a data arrangement rather than a presentation rule.
The question that exposes it
Ask two people who produce the figure for a team to describe what they excluded. Separately, in writing.
Where the answers differ, every cross-team comparison the firm has made is wrong by the size of the difference, and the difference is usually several points.
This takes ten minutes and firms that run it are routinely surprised. The surprise is instructive: the people producing the numbers each believed they were following the firm's definition, and each was following a reasonable reading of a definition that was never precise enough to have only one reading.
Two counts instead of one ratio
The structural repair is to stop publishing the ratio as the primary figure and publish the two hour counts, with the ratio derived beside them.
Hours carry their own units and invite the question the percentage suppresses. They also make a changed denominator visible at a glance, because the bottom number moves.
It is a presentational change with an informational effect, and it is the cheapest item in this section.
The repair
Change the report so the ratio cannot be displayed without both counts beside it. A format constraint rather than a policy.
Formats are obeyed and policies are not, which is the only reason to prefer the first.