Steve commented on Freds reply to my Goldratt citations:
snip
>The context of the comments by Goldratt is important.
>
>> ...The direct purpose of measurement is to determine the state of some
>>variable in relation to some preferred, required, or desired state. In
>>short, the primary purpose of measurement is to find out something, not
>>drive someone else's behavior.
Let me explain about the context, although we are leaving the specific
thread of "Measuring Learning" for a more general "Measuring".
Goldratt notes, that often local measurements on e.g. machines in
manufacturing are used to determine the overall performance of a plant.
Such a widely used measurement is the productivity: For example a machine
may have cost per hour of 1000$ (including a lot of allocated cost from
indirect departments). If you get 10 parts per hour out of that machine,
it adds 100$ to the product cost. If you could get 20 parts per hour
(double productivity), it would only add 50$ to the product cost, which is
assumed to be a 50$ improvement. One dollar saved anywhere in the system
is one dollar saved for the system as a whole. This is the "cost world"
view as Goldratt calls it.
The purpose, or better, the intent (as Steve suggested) of the
productivity measurement is to motivate the parts to do, what is good for
the organisation as a whole. If every foreman looks after the productivity
of his machines, it will benefit the productivity of the plant, improving
competitiveness and finally financial results, providing the foreman with
a secure and challenging workplace.
Then Goldratt states, that a foreman who is measured according to
productivity will look after productivity. Compensation, incentives and/or
holding/loosing the job depend on it. Yes, Fred, you may call this
manipulative, but as long as the foreman agrees to the logic, that led to
the measurement of productivity, it is also true, what Tom Petzinger
writes in his new book (The New Pioneers, p.121): "day to day management
required tracking information instead of controlling people." Measuring
productivity is just tracking information.
So here we come from the intent of the measurement (local productivity is
good for global performance) to the effect in behaviour (maintain or
increase local productivity). And whatever has been learnt should be
measurable as increase in productivity. Thus measuring changes in
productivity would be synonym for measuring learning.
Now comes the clue, that led to the second part of the effect-citation:
"if you measure me in an illogical way - don't complain about illogical
behaviour". Imagine that the foreman is saying this. Goldratt proofs that
increasing productivity locally everywhere does not only not improve the
global performance, but it harms global performance. Usually, work in
progress inventories go up, lead time goes up, but neither operating
expenses go down nor sales go up. This is not a unique observation of TOC.
JIT and TQM deal with the same dilemma.
What the foreman "said" in the words of Goldratt is nothing but the
request for a better measurement, other informations to be tracked, in
order to better know how to improve the overall performance.
That Goldratt is far from manipulative or controlling management, do I
derive from the following two hints on Goldratts thinking:
Goldratt says, that people know tacitly (he says intuitively) whether a
set of measurements is logical, in line with the overall purpose of the
organisation, or not. If such a set is logical and the members of that
organisation agree to the purpose, than no manipulation is needed in order
to track and improve the measurements. But if actual measurements are
somehow in conflict with the purpose, people will feel this.
Unfortunately, such feeling reflect only tacit knowledge, which can
usually not be expressed, because language (the formal level) is on the
side of the actual measurements. To maintain the actual measurements, some
kind of manipulation is necessary to suppress the tacit knowledge, also
suppressing creativity.
Secondly, Goldratt very much trusts in such creativity and warn whenever
he can against suppressing it. For example he states, although he provides
logical sets of measurements for various contexts, that such sets MUST be
derived by those measured according to such a set by themselves. Giving
them the solution, would insult their creativity in the same way as
creativity is used to for so long, so that tacit knowledge and insulted
creativity cannot recognise that the presented solution IS the solution.
Buy-in is impossible. Goldratt is very drastical about this. He says that
presenting a solution is an EGO-TRIP for the presenter. Nothing more. But
thats the usual way: You point to a problem only when you can present a
solution as well.
So if you emerged to the treasure of the solution, don't throw this
treasure at the heads of others, but help them to let the treasure grow
within themselves, so that they can achive ownership in it.
This should be sufficient for now. I will have to pause an listen for your
comments again.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>