We all know about dysfunctional measures. One that
distort behaviour, cause information to be hidden, ambulance drivers
to park outside Accident and emergency,
Why. Simply, because measures on their own do not communicate
what is required. This is one of our favourite rants.
Lets take a simple example. Central government send out over
100 measures of “Best value” for councils. Until recently,
not one actually said why it was being measured. You had to guess
and interpret what was the intention.
What is going on? So someone in Whitehall (or corporate headquarters)
is deciding that a particular issue is important. Rather than
explaining what they want to achieve they decide to present it
as a measure. So someone spends ages thinking up suitable measures
to represent what they are thinking.
Now, rather than explaining the thinking and why the measure
was chosen, they just communicate the measure. But, the measure
is actually merely a surrogate for what they are thinking: What
they want to achieve.
You receive the measure. Now you have to reverse the logic. Here
is the measure. What did they mean by that? What was their underlying
thinking? You have to guess the underlying logic. To work backwards
to the original objective.
Ever played the children's game Chinese wispers, where the message
gets passed along the line and becomes distorted as it goes.?
Of course by the time these steps have been taken (think of the
objective, create the measure, communicate it, guess what it means
or rather what they intended, communicate it to others, and then
act to satisfy it) you can be a long way from the original intention.
It gets worse when the first measure does not work so another,
and another is added. Its like a series of ranging shots from
a gun, this one fell short, so try something a but longer next
time.
This is compounded when the measure, without the explanation
is used to rank or penalise people. How will I be penalised.
