Managing by numbers. . .mmmm. . .
Numbers are important and have their place. They are a record of history,
not a snap-shot of the present moment. And, I suppose, there is really no
way (at least that I can think of) of measuring a given moment.
Measurement, by it's very nature, implies a review of history. .
.something had to have happened for it to be measured. (I'm sure there are
those who will argue this point, and I'm interested to hear those
arguments, as I feel a bit myopic at the moment.)
One of the things I wrestled with as a Quality Manager was our measurement
system. I have permanent scars around my neck, because I was beheaded so
much for challenging our measurement system.
In the service industry quality can only be measured after the fact. When
I've got an engineer talking to a customer live, and they give out
inaccurate technical information I can't discover it until after the fact.
There is no way I can "pull" the answer from going out. It's gone as soon
as the words are spoken. And it is a rather difficult thing to find out
who is giving out inaccurate information and who is not. Polling customers
works to a degree, but many of the customers don't even know the
information they were given is false.
And so our measurement system did us very little good. It was amusing,
however, to sit in management meetings and listen to our executives
explain why we were or were not doing well based upon their measurements.
I now understand, a little better, where mythology had it's roots:
Executives explaining the success or failure of their business.
-- Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>