Part 4 of 4
Measuring Growth
By Madhav Kaushish · Ages 10+
Glagalbagal had discovered that comparing two managers against each other was not enough. If they colluded — agreeing to do no work and split the reward — his comparison system was useless. He needed to measure something different: not which herd was larger, but whether each herd was actually growing.
The Insight
The key insight came to Glagalbagal one evening as he reviewed his records. He realised he needed to compare each herd not against the other herd, but against its own past. If a herd was bigger this year than last year, the manager was doing something right. If it was the same size or smaller, the manager was failing.
The Method
His solution involved keeping records of the pebble arrangements. After the harvest festival Hrijpa, he would create a copy of that day's pebble arrangement for each herd. A year later at the next Hrijpa, he would compare the new arrangement to the old one.
The comparison used the same principle he had already discovered: matching pebbles from both arrangements one at a time. If the new arrangement had pebbles left over after the old arrangement was exhausted, the herd had grown. If the old arrangement had pebbles left over, the herd had shrunk. The leftover pebbles measured the size of the change.
The Result
When Glagalbagal implemented this system without informing the managers, the results were revealing. Both herds showed minimal growth. One had actually shrunk. Glagalbagal replaced both managers on Hrijpa day.
The Remaining Problem
While this approach successfully identified underperforming managers, Glagalbagal remained unsatisfied. Waiting an entire year for business progress data seemed too long. By the time Hrijpa came around, the damage was already done — a bad manager could neglect the herd for months before being discovered.
He began to contemplate how to track performance on shorter time scales. Could he measure growth monthly? Weekly? What would that require? And how small could the time interval be before the measurements stopped being useful?