Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.

• Thomas S. Monson. Favorite Quotations from the Collection of Thomas S.Monson. Deseret Books, 1985

This appears to have been wisdom that management-trained Thomas S. Monson derived from Karl Pearson¹, a 19th century British mathematician and biostatistician, one of the founders of important segments of modern statistical analysis.

Footnotes

¹ Quote-sleuthing courtesy of http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/742598.html , which includes a link to Pearson’s useful wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Pearson