‘What Gets Measured Gets Done’ gets my vote for the single, most dangerous, least accurate, management ‘truism’ of them all!<\/p>\n
Suppose we changed the expression to ‘What Gets Recognised <\/strong>Gets Done’.\u00a0\u00a0 What difference would that make to the way we do our business?<\/p>\n First of all managers and leaders would have to think about what they want to recognise in their organisation.\u00a0 This is a big question.\u00a0 It speaks to values, performance and ethos.\u00a0 Recognition encourages consideration of many things that cannot be easily ‘measured’.<\/p>\n If Enron had ‘recognised’ more than short term financial performance would things have\u00a0 turned out differently?\u00a0 What are Goldman Sachs ‘recognising’ as they pay out \u00a38.4 billion in performance related bonuses to their staff (UK employees of the bank average \u00a3320 000 in Performance Related Pay)?\u00a0 Is financial performance the only thing that matters for Goldman Sachs or do they provide equally strong ‘recognition’ for other things that might matter like ‘ethics’ or ‘long term customer relationships’?<\/p>\n Secondly managers and leaders would have to consider how are they going to recognise it?\u00a0 What does excellence look like, sound like, feel like?\u00a0 You can’t just rely on the numbers.\u00a0 You might have to go and observe people doing the work:<\/p>\n Feedback becomes a primary tool for recognising what works and what doesn’t.\u00a0 It also becomes a primary tool for reward as people start to get recognition and validation for the good stuff that they do.<\/p>\n So the next time someone says ‘What gets measured gets done’\u00a0 perhaps you should ask them if they really believe what they say.<\/p>\n\n