(Part 24): What Gets Measured Gets Managed and Improved (Part 24): What Gets Measured Gets Managed and Improved. So I aim to eat mostly stuff that our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have eaten. I believe failing to measure it in the past, is the reason R&D productivity has declined 65%, which in turn is the reason GDP growth is stagnant. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. My goal is to restore companies’ RQs and revive economic growth. Doing the right thing. Note: The quote from Simon Caulkin above was previously inaccurately attributed to V. F. Ridgway. Ridgway clearly was onto something in 1956. By Tom Peters. Given who is most at risk for COVID, this seems reasonable. It is a fitness tracking device that is worn like a watch. First, Drucker — according to the Drucker Institute no less — never said it. Despite the fact we have daily data on COVID deaths, we have no current data on any other causes of death. Simon Caulkin, a columnist, neatly summarized Ridgway’s argument as: “What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so”. Because measuring what we actually care about — rather than what’s easily measured — is fiendishly difficult and often impossible. Up until a few weeks ago, I had never heard this quote. Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 106): Run From Honor, Not to It. qualitative aspects of business -- for example, on people, customer satisfaction, nurturing of unruly champions and managing. There’s an entire list with hilarious examples of algorithms being given a metric to optimize for and finding entirely unexpected ways of ostensibly achieving their objective while violating common sense. The problem is lack of data to support or refute that argument. It’s also obvious that there are plenty of organizations that achieve outstanding results without measuring some outcome of interest and “managing” for it. Both of my books, In Search of Excellence and A Passion. This in turn has meant furloughing healthcare workers and/or cutting their pay. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. What gets measured, gets managed. That means experimenting with what works best for you. Armed with the measure, I discovered the GM-Hughes problem was widespread—on average, companies’ RQs have declined 65% over the past three decades. “What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so”. "What gets measured, gets managed." All those Harvard Business Review articles attributing the quote to him? What Gets Measured Gets Managed Health is wealth and it is hard to maintain it in a good condition in a fast-developing world. Why would Ridgway say that it may be pointless to measure and manage something? What’s depressing about this is how predictable these problems with measurement and management are, how long we’ve understood them, how everyone involved in pursuing some meaningless metric knows it’s a sham and how “what gets measured gets managed” somehow is still accepted as gospel. Profit is no longer the only measure of … This particular dilemma comes at unprecedented cost, however—regardless of whether COVID increases the death rate or merely substitutes for other causes of death. When you don’t measure something, you’ll find it much harder to manage it. Not everything that matters can be measured. With the end of the year coming up, this is a post that outlines what I measure in terms of finances. If we compare the 23,608 COVID deaths to the rates above, we see COVID deaths represent less than 10% of all U.S. deaths per month. That’s why it’s hard to understand why we are still having this debate more than 60 years after his paper. Knowing your numbers and your KPI's (key performance indicators) is … Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 106): Run From Honor, Not to It (Part 69): Stealing from … J. Eric Davies. Later you can start to optimise your diet as well as recording it. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, center, during a White House news conference in on COVID-19 March 4, ... [+] 2020. This state of affairs has taken years to develop, and some of this change was necessary. 2020. Data are just summaries of thousands of stories. RQ is the only measure of R&D capability that predicts companies’ growth and market value. “What gets measured gets managed” ("You can’t manage what you can’t measure") Entry in progress—B.P. October 4, 2020 by Digital Media, Society, and Culture Leave a Comment In other words, putting a certain activity under the microscope can help you to make it better. "What gets measured gets managed," says Ann Cairns, the payments company's executive vice chairman. What gets measured, gets managed…. Not everything that we can measure matters. Taking it to the logical extreme, we certainly can’t afford 100% of GDP for all causes of death combined. How can we respond? Apparently not so. Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett Packard also reportedly said, “You cannot manage what you cannot measure…and what gets measured gets done.” A bit of digging reveals, however, two surprising things. Lets’ now examine a less generous case for COVID—that many of the 23,608 deaths attributed to it, would otherwise have been attributed to heart disease, cancer, etc. I was innocently asking a friend about his Fitbit Force and whether or not he liked the device. With that as caveat, let’s allocate all COVID deaths to a single month. For example, do you manage how many miles/km’s per gallon/liter your vehicle gets? I love the proverb, “What gets measure gets managed.” This principle often gets applied to business situations. What gets measured gets managed. New initiative created in partnership with KPMG aims to turn data into delivery to boost Scotland’s flagging productivity. It can mean that simply examining an activity changes the activity by forcing you to pay attention to it. Coronavirus is putting our election system at stake. Terminal 8 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) Thursday, April 9, 2020. They achieve higher patient satisfaction at lower costs without measuring and managing for either in any meaningful way. Business is changing. Analytics tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful. There is so much power in this quote. This morning it was 23,608 in the U.S. That sounds like a big number, but it is actually meaningless without context, so let’s provide that. What gets measured, gets managed. This old adage rings true today in the sustainability world. ‘What gets measured, gets managed’ is a common business phrase and it’s interesting to see that many business leaders take as much trouble to track key elements in their personal lives as well as their business behaviours, and see real benefits in doing so,” … Weak growth has been a persistent challenge for the Scottish economy. I couldn't even explain it adequately. Here’s the problem—the most recent data I could find on the CDC website for US mortality was from 2018. We are in a classic dilemma of managing what gets measured, while ignoring what doesn’t. The problem with most small businesses these days is that they don’t actually know whether they’re actually successful or simply lucky to be surviving. Indeed the paper’s title is “Dysfunctional Consequences of Performance Measurements”. The difficulty of precisely specifying the outcome we are truly after is well known to AI researchers. If you think really hard about it, even soft metrics like employee morale can be measured. As a result the reformulation of the adage is: “What gets mobilized gets managed, especially if it gets measured”. Why Analytics - Few Thoughts . If you've never tracked yourself, you don't even know how much power there is in tracking. Some people really want to know their fuel mileage. However, the ability to measure and review data doesn’t mean we’re always measuring the right things. I believe that’s the real explanation for stagnant growth. "What gets measured, gets managed." I made the switch to keep companies from destroying their innovation engines, as GM did to Hughes. I am a big believer in what gets measure, gets managed. for Excellence, are said to have placed renewed emphasis on the. To summarize: Drucker never said the infamous sentence and we know already in 1956 that the “what gets measured gets managed” was deeply flawed. I’m a former engineer and program manager at Hughes Aircraft Company, who turned academic, and am now the Robert and Barbara Frick Professor in Business at WashU in St. I’m a former engineer and program manager at Hughes Aircraft Company, who turned academic, and am now the Robert and Barbara Frick Professor in Business at WashU in St Louis. It’s less so when organisations and the people they serve are affected like when “staff at an outsourced Police control room were making 999 calls at quiet times in order to meet their target of answering 92% of calls within 10 seconds”. Out of all received wisdoms “what gets measured gets managed” must be one of the most widely accepted as obvious. Peter Drucker is often attributed with this quote but he probably wasn't the first to say it and the origin of this expression is up for debate. "What gets measured, gets managed." Or the time when “doctors [in the UK] were diverted from treating seriously ill patients to ones with minor problems in order to meet 4-hour waiting time targets” (details here). Flu 4,600. “What gets measured gets managed”, is an often-quoted phrase in business. WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE. We measure employee attendance, physician engagement, hand hygiene, bloodborne pathogen exposure, time to answer a call light, equipment downtime, number of falls, and the list goes on. More data improves your vision. I measure several things every month, but also roll them up into annual or multi-year results. Part 4: Measurement & metrics – what gets measured, gets managed! It’s important to evaluate brand performance from multiple angles to give us a rounded, comprehensive picture, e.g. Whoever said it first, I disagree. Every morning for the past month, we’ve been able to read how many COVID-19 deaths have occurred through the day before. If it’s reasonable to spend $2 trillion in federal relief, in addition to sacrificing 10% of GDP, to address COVID, shouldn’t people with heart disease expect us to spend $5 trillion and 25% of GDP on heart disease? You should be skeptical of the analysis I’m about to do, because I am comparing high resolution data on COVID deaths, with old as well as low resolution data on other deaths, but that’s what we have to work with. Thus, we have no sense of whether COVID has actually increased the death rate, or if it merely replaced one cause of death for another. 03 June 2019. What gets measured gets managed . What struck me is that this is not so much a comment on the charity sector, but on poor performance management in general. I recently read the anonymous ‘confessions of a charity professional’ entitled ‘I wish someone had kicked me up the arse for wasting charity time and money’ on the Guardian Voluntary Sector Network. “What gets measured, gets managed.” -Peter Drucker . - Peter Drucker. If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. So, be careful how you set the goal. Relatedly, we have no data on the comorbidities in the COVID deaths. What Gets Measured, Gets Managed October 9th, 2016 Motivation balance , exercise , fitness , goals , health and fitness , motivation If I were to ask you what you had for breakfast, you’d probably be able to answer easily and fairly accurately, unless I also asked you … You probably don’t. You may opt-out by. If you can't explain information simply, you don't understand it well enough. This is conservative since they’ve been occurring since February, but it seems reasonable since they haven’t yet peaked. This is entertaining in the case of a toy algorithm. “What gets measured gets managed,” says Drew Smith, a business and risk consultant with Rochdale Paragon Group. The answer of course is no—we can’t afford it. “What gets measured gets managed can be dangerous. The book, How Innovation Really Works, documents insights from two NSF-funded studies about how to do that. After all, how could we ever manage something that isn’t being measured? The Dutch home care organization Buurtzorg is just one example. You will be measure what you want to manage, as long as you are explaining why you are measuring it and wanting to manage it. Shouldn’t the people with heart disease and cancer feel it is unfair COVID is getting more attention than their disease? You wouldn't believe me. Let that sink in. In basic terms, if you give me a large bonus based on a certain measurement, I’m probably going to adjust my behavior to try to reach the target. If you are unfamiliar with Fitbit, it is similar to the Nike Fuelband or Jawbone Up. This particular dilemma comes at unprecedented cost, … V. F. Ridgway published a paper in 1956 criticizing the measurement mantra. A plausible rebuttal is that without intervention, COVID deaths would exceed heart deaths. Hat tip to Bill Hennessy whose blog post on this topic sparked my investigation into this — note though that the V. F. Ridgway quote is misattributed there. Most notably, I advocate that firms measure their R&D productivity. Today however, I want to talk about the dark side of measurement, to address an issue that is more urgent, and that also has implications for how much GDP growth revival is required. 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