Posts RSSG’day all, I want to have a rant about one of the great pieces of modern (and corporate) mythology. If you spend any time in the corporate world, you will soon come across a mantra very similar to this - What gets measured is what gets done. Maybe you’ve heard it as We Do What We Measure.
I’d love to say this is total, complete and utter nonsense but I don’t think that’s strong enough. There’s nothing about these statements that is anything other than complete BS, and usually self-serving BS at that.
Do you measure how you look after your family? Do you count the meals, the trips to school, the time spent with children to evaluate effectiveness? When you buy that great new dress or suit that you love, did you then sit down and work through complex metrics to measure what you did?
So why do you think it’s different in business? I’ll tell you why, it’s because you don’t trust people to do the job you employed them to do. You don’t believe they are motivated and care about their work, so you can only make sure they are working by measuring what they do, and then argue that this is the motivational tool. Measuring because “we do what we measure” is a failure of leadership, a failure of motivation, a failure of selection, a failure to define values, a failure of engagement and a failure of communication. Actually, it’s more likely that you’ve never really challenged the mantra because you haven’t had the time, but this is how it can look to your people and outsiders.
Maybe if that’s all that was wrong with this phrase, you’d be tempted to let it go. But it gets worse. Organisations should be measuring achievement. Are we reaching our goals, are we moving forward, are we still innovating and meeting market demand. We don’t have the resources and the time to spend on measuring what we do. You really want to measure every meeting, every memo, every communication, every operation you undertake?
“We do what we measure” is a great mantra for many consultants. It allows them to measure activity rather than effectiveness, and even better allows them to measure the activity of others and not have to wait around to evaluate long term effectiveness in assisting corporations to meet goals.It also allows them to focus us on projects (something to do that can be measured by activity) which may hopefully get them some more work.
And it is a wonderful tool for CEO who don’t want to work at leading and motivating, but would prefer to ensure that workers do the work required, not add value to their organisations and its customers. And it avoids all that messy relationship building and communication that effective leaders have to spend so much time on.
Yes, you need to have performance evaluation methods in place, but not measurements of what we do. Try some measurements of what we achieve, measurements of what we’ve learnt, measurements of how we’ve grown, measurements that can motivate, recognise and reward.
Look at your life as an individual and family member. How much do you do that you measure? Look at your life as a member of your communities - Going to a sports game or the theatre; Socialising with friends; Being on the PTA and Neighbourhood Watch - Do you do these things because they are measured? Even look at your work history - did you measure all the networking you did, every piece of work you have done, all the frustrations you experienced?
I suggest you do these things because you care, because you get satisfaction out of them, because you believe they are the right things to do, not because you measure them.
Measuring achievement may be motivating, though again there are only so many resources you can devote towards measurement.
But please don’t get sucked into business mantras because they sound easy, good and simple to implement. This is an example of a business mantra that is not only useless, but potentially misleading, wasteful and dangerous to the future success of your business.
Cheers, geoff
May 19th, 2010 at 6:55 am
Geoff — I was in danger of bursting a blood vessel, so I went back to my blog and composed a trenchant response. http://bit.ly/commammo3
Let’s mix it up!
Sean
@commammo
May 19th, 2010 at 7:08 am
this is just SO wrong. First of all, I have 23 years of data that says that yes, you do become what you measure. If you start measuring message communication, I almost always find my clients message pull thru goes up. But even more important, how can you possibly think that you can make decisions today without solid data. How do you know if you should be on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or sending out press releases if you don’t have data to tell you what is working and not working? If all PR people followed your advice, the profession will be obsolete in 5 years.
May 19th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Sean and Katie, thanks for the thoughtful responses. Sean, I’ve posted a comment on your site - we’ll get dizzy if we go on like this!
Katie, I continually worry when PRs read everything as being about them. I’ve read and re-read this in case I got it wrong, but I still can’t see anything in this that makes this post about PR, and not about people.
If you have 23 years of data that says you become what you measure, then what have you become exactly? And how have you measured how you have collected that data? And did collecting it truly define who and what you are?
I think I say three times in this post alone, and numerous times in previous blogs that you should measure, especially corporate achievements. What I don’t accept is that the reason we do things is driven by measurement alone as the mantra clearly implies. The rant was about the whole mantra, not a selected part.
Cheers, geoff
May 20th, 2010 at 6:03 am
Sorry Geoff — you can’t be a PR pro and make these statements without earning the attention of other PR pros!
I disagree that the mantra says you should be driven only by measurement. If there is a mantra about measurement it’s that you have to do it. Ask the average business person (outside of PR) about measurement, and you’ll get a positive response. Ask the average PR pro and you’ll get a million reasons not to measure. The marketers and advertisers are better at it than the PR people.
I submit that’s in part due to marketing being taught in business schools and PR in Journalism schools. Embracing outcome measurement should be Job One for Public Relations.
For “everyday people,” I certainly don’t see any evidence that they’re living lives of quiet desperation because of over attention to measurement! One might say that the global financial conflagration is a consequence of INattention to measurement.
Cantankerously yours,
Sean
May 20th, 2010 at 11:41 am
G’day Sean, and there it is … the problem with mantras and labels defined in one stroke … “I disagree that the mantra says …”
As a comms/pr pro, you know that what we want to say isn’t always what they get to hear. You also know that people pick-up mantras and labels and misuse them because their simplicity belies their complexity (for more on this read my first ever blog on this site, A rose by any other name).
Take off your “measurement expert” hat and put on your “target audience” hat - the words say it all and many people like literal meanings. “What gets measured is what gets done” is pretty clear in that context, isn’t it. “We do what we measure” is also pretty clear - easy to misuse without the background - and this is the way I have experienced it in workplaces.
However, now I want to see you write a blog with the title “the global financial conflagration is a consequence of INattention to measurement” - fascinating and thought provoking thesis!
Cheers
geoff
May 21st, 2010 at 6:16 am
Geoff
Your argument that “you get what you measure is BS” is flawed as you appear to have redefined the mantra as “what isn’t measured doesn’t get done”
That aside I agree with you points on lack of trust and the inneffective use of metrics, especially in employee engagement surveys.
I liken “measuring engagement” to “weighing of souls” more here
http://bit.ly/b99Gxh
best
Sean
May 21st, 2010 at 9:19 pm
G’day Geoff
Thought you could use a response from someone who actually loved this post!
Not entirely sure what you did to deserve quite such a vitriolic response from Katie in particular, as - like you - I’ve read and re-read the post and nowhere can I see you saying “don’t measure”.
What I *do* see is some very perceptive probing of the tendency to measure certain things, and the perfectly legitimate questioning of whether that measurement tells us anything useful about how we are creating value in the organisation.
Your linking of much of the measurement that goes on with failures of leadership, selection, defining values etc. is absolutely bang on in my book. As Kevin Keohane and I have argued on many occasions (and as Kevin has written about very eloquently in ‘The Talent Journey’), engagement isn’t something that happens in isolation. It’s the result a much larger system of communications and behaviours that actually begins long before someone decides to come and work for you.
If you get the early stuff right - if you’ve got a clear EVP and you’ve recruited the right people in the first place (which, btw, is as much about keeping the wrong people out as getting the right people in) - then many of these measures ought to be rendered redundant. The right behaviours are second nature - no Big Brother, no shoe-horns required.
Best, D.
May 22nd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Thanks Dan, as I’ve just missed out on my dream job, I needed a bit of a pick me up and your comment certainly helps. You eloquently describe in your comment my strong feelings and my view that the measures are the end, not the definition.
Sean T, yes I agree in part with how you see me defining the mantra, but I have to disagree that I redefined it. This is very much the way I have experienced managers and CEO attempting to apply the mantra - after all, it is an easy escape route from real leadership! Your post is remarkable and well worth the read. I’m going to have to allow that one to fester in my brain for a while. I’ll see if I can get back to you.
On his post, Sean W describes a “violent agreement” that we all have - the link is in his first comment. I couldn’t violently agree more Sean!
Thanks everyone for your interest and for taking the time to give my rant some substance.
Cheers, geoff
May 27th, 2010 at 4:29 am
As much as I love all of you, I think you all have missed the boat. It’s not “whether” you measure, it’s “what” you measure. My particular beef, for instance, is the insistence on using Return on Investment (ROI) as the arbiter of the value of all communication activity.
I agree with you that in some cases, overmeasurement is simply the kind of bullying you decry. Asking a change communication program–which serves to mitigate risk on a substantial investment rather than to achieve its own savings or make its own profits–to demonstrate an ROI can be interpreted as this form of bullying.
But the right kind of measurements–measurements gauged to objectives and the intelligent use of tactics–can have a far more liberating and ennobling effect.
May we develop the competence to elicit measurements that are interesting and relevant–and the confidence to challenge those who seek to measure us against inappropriate criteria.
Best from Brussels,
Mike Klein
May 27th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Mike, insightful comment as usual. We say we need to talk the language of business and use terms like ROI - yet ROI itself within the financial side of business (and how many CEO come through those disciplines) is treated cautiously by strategic leaders because of its inability to measure long term potential for achievement as distinct from short term returns.
Sean W has pointed out to me the importance of acknowledging my own profession in this blog, so I will add this. We have been talking about measurement and speaking the language of the “C-Suite” throughout my two decades in this profession. There is a mountain of research and many measurement techniques available out there for us. Sean himself has done extensive work with IPR and Katie pointed out her 23 years worth of data.
If we don’t have the “confidence to challenge those who seek to measure us against inappropriate criteria” by now, then we are very slow learners. Perhaps I don’t encounter this as often as others because I work in-house and tend to be asked to develop my own measurements and KPI, so I’ve rarely found this to be an issue.
But I return to my fundamental point in the rant, which is that people in organisations are not motivated solely by the measurements applied to them, regardless of what field they are in, and they do an awful lot that is not measured.
Cheers, geoff
June 8th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Thanks Geoff, remarkable is a word not used often on my posts.
To my point, the gist of your argument “what get’s measured gets done is BS” seems to be that some things get done that aren’t measured. I don’t see that as any great insight, the fact is that measurement does drive behaviour in organisations (but not always te right way). The art is, as Mike says, is getting the metrics right. That’s not lazy.
A good illustration is safety.
Organisations don’t avoid accidents with no metrics. In fact, the right metrics prevent incidents, the wrong metrics can create the wrong culture and lead to a false sense of security.
This is an area where engagement and measurement can save lives.
June 8th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Sean T, thanks again for commenting and you raise an interesting example. In Australia at the moment, there is a long running safety campaign being undertaken about safety in the workplace. Do you think the campaign is based on the statistics or metrics?
No, the campaign isn’t based on the workplace at all. Instead it shows scenes or ordinary family lives, proud parents pinning a drawing by their young child on the fridge, a father walking in on his daughter having a cuddle with the boyfriend on the couch and so on. The message? Their most important reason for workplace safety isn’t in the workplace at all.
The metrics may well drive management, and certainly has an impact on insurance and other costs. But all this results in usually are formulas and processes and written policies and, sometimes, lack of innovation.
Making safety about people and their lives is much more motivational, inspirational and likely to result in putting safety front of mind. Again, I’m not saying don’t measure. The right measurements will help guide safety culture and actions.
But when it comes to driving behaviour, I suggest leadership and focus on people is more important.
Cheers, geoff
July 4th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Geoff
You touch on the importance of having the right mix of emotional and rational drivers. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a campaign around statistics, I wonder why?
I have devised and run campaigns on workplace safety like the one you describe in Australia and they do help by capturing employees emotion, but they only work when they are follwed through with leadership commitment.
In my experience the metrics, the campaigns and the comms are all valid enablers to help drive behaviour. I absolutely concur with your suggestion that leadership and focus is key - the reality is that numbers help drive the focus of leaders.