W. Edwards Deming is often credited with a pithy quote that's the opposite of his original intent: "If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it." This is a word-for-word quote taken out of context. The full quote: "It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth." article 
The sentence is a triple negative: "wrong...can't...can't". Quite easy to take out of context.
Some rephrase it positively: "if you can measure it, you can manage it."
While that claim remains true, Deming was pointing to something else: "It is wrong to suppose" and "costly myth" are telling us something.
The competitive advantage we seek lies not in the data and metrics of what we can measure. We seek too manage the vast realm of things that are not measurable.