Rohit,
Thank you for your response. I suspect in many ways we are not far
apart in our thinking. When you say, "my concern is that we turn principle
into practice we have to take account of human nature," I agree
wholeheartedly. In addition, measures without other, more subtle and more
ambiguous assessment methods, will never give a clear picture of your
world.
I would argue that the best companies use a mix of measures and
other ways to assess the state of the organization. And I agree that we
need to go beyond -- way beyond--financial measures. On the other hand, if
you have an organization that misleads itself, doing away with measures
will not solve the problem.
Therefore, When you say, "I think this points to the heart of the
problem. Weaknesses of people lead us to take the easy way out and focus
on the measures. We then get measure serving behaviuor and a pressure for
people to deliver the measures not necessarily the behaviours or
performance goals of which the measures are only an indicator." I agree
with the first sentence, but I have observed that eliminating the measures
does not solve the problem. I also see other people who have the same
measures, but avoid being slave to the numbers. So I think you solve the
problem by focusing on the root of it, which is the people. This is the
essence of good management and leadership.
We measure attitudes and commitment of employees through anonymous
questionairres. We measure customer satisfaction the same way. It is
somewhat subjective, and we think that is a strength. Needs change over
time, and the results should reflect that. When we are brutally honest
with ourselves, wc accept the trends as our responsibility. When we aren't
strong enough to do that, we find external causes. Almost invariably, when
we accepted responsibility, we struggled, gained insight, and learned
something.
--Rol Fessenden 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>