Part 15 (1/2)

Managers often pick the flashi+est looking tools, and are disappointed by their inadequacy I want to help you avoid ”choosing poorly” The fear, uncertainty, and doubt around all rams ste harm to those who are asked to provide the data At tiement practices Because I aood, I believe that the misuse of metrics is rarely due to intentional actions Most of the time, the abuse of metrics occurs because leaders are ement techniques that use : The use of stretch goals

Measures as goals

Targets and thresholds

Incentive programs based on measures

These techniques may seem quite innocent and proper There are authors, experts, and consultants who promote each, if not all, of them Even successful CEOs will applaud the use of these ”tools” for improvement Do not be fooled: these are misuses of metrics, and any success attained by these paths is temporary

Let's look at each briefly, and then introduce a sioals to strive for success is a good thing Theoals is where leaders fall astray Goals in theoals are a potent coanization forward But the anization's efforts to crash and burn

Invariably, stretch goals are not independently identified for self-iood tool for h ”Stretch” goals are the latest silver bullet The leader sets stretch goals for a departoal is attained The leader looks brilliant, the department/ worker is applauded, and everyone is happy Except that in oal was dictated (rather than collaboratively agreed upon) and the workers have no ownershi+p No ownershi+p oal is typically a big task to be achieved This is fine if it ends there But the school of thought is to upgrade the first stretch goal with a tougher, bigger stretch goal the next year And so on, and so on The workforce eventually catches on to this

I can clearly hear the orator in the coliseuer keeps pushi+ng to see how et out of the workforce The workforce wisely realizes how late they have to achieve the goal within the required tioal before the year is out-better to deliver on tianization-and they definitely do not belong to the workforce No, these goals are solely owned by oals is that other ill suffer Work that ood enough” since it is not a part of the stretch goals It is hard to stay focused on the big picture when oals are set up as the standard of excellence

Measures as Goals

Another common probleoal itself, instead of focusing on the identified require If your task is to sell five thousand units of the new product are you oal, you'd be mistaken A sioal,” would you be happier or not? How about ten more (or ten less)? One hundred? If it oal

Where this becomes important is when the workforce needs to understand the purpose, the big picture, the anization When you treat the worker as a partner in improvement, you don't atteoals” or by having theoal

The true goalsales is one possible task toward that end, and the idea of selling any particular number of any particular item would be a subtask The number of items sold would constitute a measure of success

When you chase the MoS you lose focus You oal For example, you may sell five thousand units of the new itenificantly in the other product lines This would not end up helping you achieve the goal

Another way to look at it is to remember that any measure of success (or full blown metric) is only an indicator Therefore, you should not celebrate the oal; it is only an indicator of possibly reaching the goal

Even when ers occasionally ets and thresholds

Targets and Thresholds

Targets, like stretch goals, have the nasty habit of being re-written each tiet, you can bet that it will be reached at the eleventh (if not final) hour Again, there's no benefit to the workforce in achieving the target earlier than asked for since the most common response (after the set to reach

Targets (when ical, data-driven decisions They are moved based on their achieveet is set based only on hoell youa poor indicator as the ”truth” The workforce again will coaet early, the reward is usually the saers reward last-second heroics more than they reward early achieveer's underestiet wasn't ”tough” enough, so why highly reward for reaching it?

And the games continue

It behooves the workers to barely reach the target The e of the workers' capabilities and a shrewdand able to be encouraged Everyone is happy

Thresholds are the saative point of view Instead of setting a bar higher each ti to reach it, the threshold sets the es the workforce to stay above it throughout

Again, the workforce is smarter than the manipulators believe They will stay above this nificantly, the minimum will be raised until they fail, at which ti inco new hires to ”slon” because the over energetic rookie will make theame and quickly adapt to the ers

You're probably wondering what the proble the acceptable levels of perforood communication to make this clear to the workforce And you'd be correct But, when targets and thresholds are misused, they never stabilize-they constantly oes, it's hard to hit a rams Based on Measures

The last ain, as with stretch goals and using oal-the e There was an Olyerecord he broke Not surprisingly, he broke his oorld records increht allowed to count as a new record He was able to break world records many times This was probably not exactly what the establishraoal, the results were naturally off center

More enterprises than you can ione out of business due towho the custo the goals of the organization Focusing on individual acclaianizational success, on incentives rather than overall excellence, on ets, and incentives around ned hat is important

Expectations

The use of expectations is not a conceptual or theoretical breakthrough It is not a silver bullet It, too, can be abused and misused

Expectations help you stay focused on what is important They provide the ultimate context for your metrics-based fully on the customers' point of view

Expectations provide the ultimate context for your metrics-based fully on the customers' point of view

Expectations are a clear description of what the customer expects from your service or product Of course, you can use expectations for any of the views in the Answer Key, but we're focused on effectiveness, so we'll stick to the first quadrant