Lamp Framework

The attrition dashboard shipped eight months ago. It is accurate, refreshed nightly, and has changed no decisions. Now the ask is 'better people data' — which will produce a better dashboard that also changes nothing, because the missing ingredient was never the data.

Cascio and Boudreau built the LAMP framework in Investing in People on an observation most measurement programs never metabolize: measures, by themselves, do not drive change. LAMP names the four things that have to be present for a measurement effort to move decisions — Logic (the causal story connecting the measures to an outcome someone owns), Analytics (rigor that separates signal from artifact), Measures (data quality — the part everyone already invests in), and Process (the change-management work of getting the right people to act on the finding). The framework recurs in Boudreau and Ramstad's Beyond HR as part of the talentship argument: HR measurement matures into a decision science only when the measurement system is judged by the decisions it improves, not by the sophistication of what it counts.

The diagnosis the framework licenses is uncomfortable and usually right: most analytics efforts are strong on Measures — data collection is fundable, visible, and safely technical — and weak on Logic or Process, which require naming a decision and confronting an owner. Ferrar and Green's hundred-organization research in Excellence in People Analytics lands on the same asymmetry from the field side: what separates value-producing analytics functions is business-first framing, governance, and stakeholder management — the Logic and Process anchors — not superior dashboards. The audit posture that follows: for any people-measurement effort, ask which anchor fails first. That binding constraint, not more data, is the next investment.

The books give you the four anchors and the argument; here you describe the initiative and get per-anchor verdicts with evidence drawn from your own description, the binding constraint where the effort fails first, and the specific fixes — before the audience runs the same audit on you.