One Apple A Day #1119
"The problem with managing by data is that it creates a mindset that leads people to pay less attention to the day-to-day particulars of work." — H. Thomas Johnson
This is quite a dilemma I've been experiencing for years. On one side, I'm well aware that if I don't have some form of measure of what I am doing, I can't know if I am making progress or moving in the direction of my goals and aspirations. On the other side, it's easy to shift all or a large part of my focus to the measure, doing my best to improve the numbers and, in doing so, losing the ability to sense all the unmeasurable elements that are vital to achieving my goals and aspirations.
I've seen a similar dilemma in many groups. You have people pushing for making choices based solely on data to be objective and others willing to follow only their guts sensing the way forward.
Is there a solution to this dilemma?
Or maybe it is a polarity to navigate?
I still struggle with it, trying to find a working balance between data and intuition.
But this morning, while I was searching for the original source of the opening quote by Johnson, I found another sentence in the most unexpected place: a paper on the "Future Productivity and Growth in Dairy Farm Businesses in New Zealand."
The popular saying is "we cannot manage what we do not measure" This does not get it quite right. It should be "we cannot manage what we do not understand: our understanding is aided by measurement.”
That's a very fascinating shift of perspective. Data should be used not to manage things but to improve our understanding of what we want to manage. Data should focus less on tracking performance per se and more on increasing awareness of ourselves and our journey towards our goals and aspirations.
* The opening quote is from "Moving Upstream from Measurement: A former management accountant's perspective on the great dilemma of assessing results" in The Dance of Change: the Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organisations, ed. P. Senge, A. Kleiner, C. Roberts, R. Ross, G. Roth, and B. Smith, Doubleday, New York.