Myth: What Gets Measured Gets Managed

“What gets measured gets managed.” It’s Peter Drucker who said that and I disagree. Measurement alone doesn’t equate to results.

When you’re focused on measurement above all else you actually might see a decrease in your business results. Why is this?

To satisfy your customers, your work environment must be dynamic because the bottom line is that customers today are unpredictable. They need that dynamism to be satisfied – and this only comes with autonomous and agile employees.

On the other hand, measures require a fair amount of predictability.

A study was done by Boston Consulting Group that confirmed that companies’ results are diminishing because of all the procedures, vertical layers and decision approval needs.

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Here’s what I mean:

In conversation with a CEO, I learned that his son had been hired out of college to work at a local distribution center for a large retailer. The pay was acceptable, the environment was healthy but the measures were atrocious. Picking and packing metrics were so stringent that there was little time to even take a washroom break if his son was going to come close to meeting the targets.

So what happens in these situations where measures are unrealistic?

Employees take short cuts of course – soft sales targets, extended downtime, falsified quality data.

In other words – diminished results.

I invite all leaders to take a look at their current measures. Are they diminishing results in other areas of the organization?

In my forthcoming book from McGraw Hill entitled “Operational Empowerment: Collaborate, Innovate and Engage to Beat the Competition” I discuss the value of creating better measures following the SURE model.

SURE stands for measurements that are:

• Simple to comprehend
• Understood by everyone
• Realistically achievable, and can be
• Extemporaneously accomplished.

Measures that align with the SURE method can only be developed through the involvement of and collaboration with leaders and employees, those that actually perform the operations and activities.

This is a far cry from the approach that many organizations today take by either creating metrics that suit board needs; financial needs or exist as a result of an investment in a software system.

If you’re not creating collaborative metrics then you are thrusting measures on others that they have no desire to meet, and that my friends is a formula for failure.

Grab a copy of the book by clicking here.

© Shawn Casemore 2015. All rights reserved.