Having spent five years editing and publishing a pre-blog, print pub called Knowledge Inc. on the promise of knowledge management, I was intrigued by Zack Lynch's recent post on the topic of knowledge measurement.

What intrigues me most is the effort to assess and measure intangibles. It strikes me as critical endeavor at this time -- something that promises to generate extraordinary gains in the years to come. While we have measured tangibles such as manufacturing and production yields down to the the Six Sigma level, other aspects of work remain a virtual mystery.

This was once true of property itself. As Andro Linklater discusses in his wonderful book Measuring America, it was actually Gunter's chain (pictured right) and the diligence of early surveyors that enabled post-revolution America to turn intangible and unmeasured property into a powerful resource for economic growth and advancement.

"The most urgent problem facing the newly independent United States was how to pay for the war that won the country its freedom; America’s debt was enormous," writes Linklater. "Its greatest asset was the land west of the Ohio River, but for this huge territory to be sold, it had first to be surveyed—that is, measured out and mapped."

Now we need instruments, insights and pioneering surveyors for the new age of intangibles. I admire Zack and Ross Mayfield for their work on this frontier. I would be interested in seeing it tested in practice -- where the real learning and improvement begins.

One word of caution though: the measurement of "information" or "knowledge," per se, may prove a wasteful distraction. These are inputs and, as I see it, their value will always be essentially subjective. It is far more important to get a handle on actions and outcomes -- and work backward. Critical though information may be to the results we seek, behavioral changes and performance gains are influenced by more factors than information alone.

We actually seek actionable information -- we call it customer "insight" or "intelligence" here. But finding it via Google or measuring it through some new system is not the same as acting on it -- or, for that matter, leveraging it to realize new levels of measurable performance.

I could be persuaded otherwise. But I think it's performance we should be actively measuring, not knowledge, not information. Customer knowledge is not a critical metric. On the demand side of business, customer equity and even engagement are the measures that matter most.