№ 03 · Measurement
22 May 2026 · 4 min read
Your engagement score is 78. It means nothing.
Here is what does mean something: the gap between what your VPs are reporting up and what your front line is reporting down.
Every quarter, somewhere on the executive dashboard of a mid-market business in Australia, a number arrives. It is a percentage. It is between 68 and 84. It is delivered with a colour-coded badge and a benchmark callout that says we are five points above the industry average for our size band.
The number is meaningless.
Not because the methodology is wrong — though most engagement methodologies are, in a way that requires its own essay. The number is meaningless because it measures the wrong thing. It measures what the respondents felt safe enough to say, on a scale built to flatten what they actually believed. The measurement that matters is the gap between the two.
That gap, in 80% of mid-market businesses, is the largest unmeasured cost on your P&L — and you have been trained, by every consulting firm you have ever hired, to ignore it. Today we measure it.
Three weeks after the 78 arrives, the COO resigns. The 78 did not predict it. A 22-point friction gap on the strategic-disagreement node did.