There are three things we might consider when talking about measurements
and measuring:
1- Businesses operate like Complex Adaptive Systems (cas). And one of the
properties of a cas is nonlinearity (see Holland, "Hidden Order"). Our
traditional measurement tools are excellent at describing the linear
properties of a system. They don't do so well at describing the nonlinear
properties. Thus they are often beguiling, keeping hidden from our view
important information about our business performance. (And, as a result,
our measurements can keep us from maintaining a systemic view of our
business and it's performance.)
2- The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle certainly has an affect on our
organizations: By measuring them we change them. Ultimately we're left
with a measurement of the past, and that's about it. Outside of dialogue,
I know of no way to measure the "present moment" or it's capacity to
create a desired future. Intuition seems to be our best tool for grasping
the "hear and now."
3- What we measure is largely the product of our operational theories. Or,
put another way, we measure according to the "IF THEN" rules which are a
natural outgrowth of our operational theories:
IF we sell x number of units THEN we will be profitable and healthy.
>From this rule we will focus on the number of units sold, and take that to
be a key indicator of how healthy our business is. The prejudice of our
theories often cuts us off from other, perhaps more rich, ways of looking
at and measuring our business performance. The more aware we are of our
operational theories, and the IF THEN rules that emerge from them, then
the more likely we are to see hidden patterns that might be more
reflective of our actual business performance.
Our measurement systems, while important, create a type of corporate
myopia. We need to put them in their proper perspective.
-- Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>