Walter argues against measuring performance. This is a valid perspective,
but not one to which I subscribe.
Every team I have ever been associated with -- which is not the universe
of all teams -- has consisted of people who in general had some abilities
or expertise which was complementary to others on the team. The team
functioned well because of the synergies of their skills.
In my world I work all the time with teams which can be described simply
as teams of two -- a product developer and a production manager. In
reality the teams are bigger and more complex, but this suffices for my
purposes.
When we put a catalog in our customer's hands, we need goods available or
we might as well not mail the catalog. Nice picture, no goods, the
customer thinks -- correctly in my opinion -- that we are incompetent for
offering them an item we can't deliver.
In the absence of measures, we don't know why the goods are not available.
In our naivete, we turn to the person last in line, who is the production
manager. What were you thinking of, we ask. Try harder next time.
If we do even basic measuring we discover the product developer did not
specify fully the raw materials until 48 days after the information was
required. This sheds a different light on the nature of the problem. No
sense pointing fingers at the production manager, she was doomed to fail
from the beginning. When asked why he took so long to specify the raw
materials the product developer says he is working on a "stradivarius" --
a little metaphor here, and we can't rush into these things. Perhaps
there has been a massive confusion about when catalogs are being mailed,
but this is not an acceptable answer. Nor would it even be acceptable to
Ray's artists. They, in fact, are in most ways far more disciplined than
many business people in their approach to timelines. The opening is the
opening, and cannot be postponed. A major musical piece in 4 days is
pretty fast composing.
To make a long story short, measurement pinpoints the problem. It allows
management or whoever to work on the true source instead of the best-guess
source of the problem. It is also a way of making clear the priorities of
the organization.
I believe Walter's concerns are that measurement can be misused as a tool.
He is correct. They can be used to point fingers at people, and they can
be misused, or bad measures can be used for useless purposes. This is not
a valid reason to stop using them. After all, computers can be misused
also, but we don't ban them.
In the vast majority of cases, the impact of a person can be predicted
despite the impact of chaos. Missing a date is clear, playing the
clarinet out of tune is also clear, forgetting one's lines is clear.
Chaos is an interesting phenomenon, but as Warfield said recently we will
still find ways -- even as we do today -- to make things predictable
enough for our purposes.
As some have said, the safe learning environment cannot be too safe, or it
becomes a non-learning environment. Doing stand-up comedy as a training
exercise is hardly safe, it is most likely excruciating.
One point I would probably agree with Walter on is that the judgement does
not need to be external. The team can do their own measuring and their
own analysis. It does not need to be a management-driven tool. But in
the absence of data, learning is going to be minimal.
One further point -- in work with the National Labs -- Sandia, Lawrence
Livermore, etc. their work is extraordinarily creative, and simultaneously
extraordinarily ambiguous and unpredictable in outcome. They nevertheless
understand the importance of measurement whether it is an end date or an
accurate piece of data, and they measure themselves carefully. Only
through such efforts do they achieve the extraordinary things they
achieve.
--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/>