Measuring coordination without measuring the wrong thing
Files closed is an outcome, not a signal. By the time it moves, the cause is months old. Here are the three leading indicators that actually predict it.
The temptation with coordination is to measure the obvious things: files closed, response time, volume carried. All three are easy to collect and all three are close to useless as management signals.
Files closed reflects lead flow and market conditions at least as much as coordination quality. Response time rewards being fast rather than being right. Volume rewards taking on more than you can safely hold.
Worse, all three are lagging. By the time they move, whatever caused the movement happened months ago.
The three that actually predict
Obligations completed after their due date, by stage. Not a count of missed deadlines, which is thankfully near zero on a healthy team and therefore carries no information. Count everything completed late, including the ones that were caught. Late-but-caught is the leading indicator of missed-and-not-caught, and it moves first.
Breaking it down by stage tells you where the process is weak: late at extraction means intake is under-resourced, late at chasing means the escalation cadence is not working, late at settlement means the final-week checklist is too compressed.
Average age of blocked items. Everything is always outstanding, so a count of open items tells you nothing. Age tells you whether chasing is happening on a schedule or on a feeling.
A resale package ordered nine days ago and one ordered yesterday look identical on a checklist and are entirely different situations. Without elapsed time visible, escalation becomes intuition, and intuition produces both nagging and neglect in the same week.
Nobody manages what they cannot see decaying. Age is the only column that makes waiting visible.
Extensions requested. The honest lagging indicator, and worth tracking precisely because it is uncomfortable. An extension means the original date could not be met, whatever the reason. A team whose extension rate is climbing is a team whose front-loading is slipping, regardless of how busy everyone reports being.
What to do with the numbers
Not performance reviews. These are process diagnostics, and treating them as individual scorecards guarantees they get gamed: items get marked complete early, blocked items get closed and reopened, extensions get negotiated verbally so they do not appear.
Use them to answer structural questions:
- Are we late at the same stage repeatedly, meaning the process has a weak seam
- Is blocked-item age growing, meaning capacity is over-subscribed
- Did extensions rise after we added headcount, meaning we added seams faster than structure
The qualitative test that outperforms all of them
Pick a file at random, one the coordinator did not choose, and try to answer four questions without asking anybody:
- What is due on this file in the next seven days
- What is currently blocked, and for how long
- Which version of the disclosure did the buyer acknowledge, and when
- If this coordinator were unavailable tomorrow, could someone else pick it up
A file that answers all four in a few minutes is a well-run file. One that requires reconstructing events from memory and inboxes is not, and no metric on the list above would have told you.
That fourth question is the one that separates a good individual from a good system. A coordinator can be excellent and still leave behind files nobody else can run, and that is a management problem rather than a performance one.
What not to measure
- Hours worked. Rewards presence over throughput
- Emails sent. Rewards the appearance of chasing
- Files carried. Rewards taking on more than is safe, which is precisely the failure mode coordination has
- Client satisfaction alone. Real but lagging, and heavily influenced by whether the transaction happened to be easy