The Reuse Rate

Second of the four rates behind RoCor (Return on Corrections).

Capture asked: of all the corrections your people made, how many exist on record? Today the harder question: of all the corrections you captured, how many does your organization ever use AGAIN?

A captured correction is a paid lesson. Reuse is the only way it earns interest. And here is what I keep seeing: organizations celebrate the capture and skip the reuse. The library grows. Nobody borrows from it.

Measure it Monday morning, no system needed. Take last month's captured corrections. Count how many of this month's cases repeat them. Every repeat of an already-captured correction is reuse that did not happen: the fix existed, filed and forgotten, while someone paid to reinvent it.

Because the arithmetic is merciless:
What you capture and reuse compounds.
What you capture and shelve costs you twice.
Once to learn it. Once to ignore it.

Next in the series: the Leak Rate.
The full metric, its science and its open questions: first comment.