Often in today's organisations, only what is measured is valued. Which also means things are only valued which are measurable. But there are things which are critical to an organisation thriving that are not only never measured, but probably can't be measured; the very act of measurement would cause it slip away out of reach.
I'm thinking about niceness, again. I'm thinking about example-setting, fun and laughter; happiness, generosity of spirit, integrity, growing self-awareness, caring, humility, respect, mutually beneficial outcomes - hardly an exhaustive list.
We need to recognise this. Ignoring it is one of the main reasons why organisations fail to function properly – they spend too much time focusing on the wrong things, just because they can measure them.
Gather teachers together, or NHS staff, or policemen, or operational staff of any sort in any industry, and they will nearly all say the same thing. Especially those old enough to remember the days before consultants. The days when they used to concentrate on the students, on the patients, on crime, on service, on their work. They nearly all say that measurements are useful and IT can provide information now unthinkable in the past. But they will also say it feels completely out of control. That IT has taken over. And along the way the students, the patients, the public, the customers have all been pushed down the queue of priorities.
Worse, get them drunk enough and they will tell you all the ways they game the system. Fantastic tales of fixing data, under-reporting, over-reporting, massaging stats, double-counting, hiding, passing stuff elsewhere, screwing up other areas of the company/institution to save themselves, selective measurement, puffery, self-promotion, success inflation. There's a whole sub-culture predicated on making the figures look good ahead of actually doing the job required. In fact, it's not a sub-culture - it is the culture. And this is not these people's fault. It is their ability to do this that ultimately measures their success at their job. Personally, I was fucking brilliant at it.
This is not good management. This is not the way. This is madness.
I'm thinking about niceness, again. I'm thinking about example-setting, fun and laughter; happiness, generosity of spirit, integrity, growing self-awareness, caring, humility, respect, mutually beneficial outcomes - hardly an exhaustive list.
We need to recognise this. Ignoring it is one of the main reasons why organisations fail to function properly – they spend too much time focusing on the wrong things, just because they can measure them.
Gather teachers together, or NHS staff, or policemen, or operational staff of any sort in any industry, and they will nearly all say the same thing. Especially those old enough to remember the days before consultants. The days when they used to concentrate on the students, on the patients, on crime, on service, on their work. They nearly all say that measurements are useful and IT can provide information now unthinkable in the past. But they will also say it feels completely out of control. That IT has taken over. And along the way the students, the patients, the public, the customers have all been pushed down the queue of priorities.
Worse, get them drunk enough and they will tell you all the ways they game the system. Fantastic tales of fixing data, under-reporting, over-reporting, massaging stats, double-counting, hiding, passing stuff elsewhere, screwing up other areas of the company/institution to save themselves, selective measurement, puffery, self-promotion, success inflation. There's a whole sub-culture predicated on making the figures look good ahead of actually doing the job required. In fact, it's not a sub-culture - it is the culture. And this is not these people's fault. It is their ability to do this that ultimately measures their success at their job. Personally, I was fucking brilliant at it.
This is not good management. This is not the way. This is madness.
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