The Dark Side of Measurement
Does the very act of measuring people reduce their motivation..?
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.
The above quote is often attributed to founder of modern management Peter Drucker (1909-2005).
But the Drucker Institute deny he said any such thing, pointing out that his view of measurement was much more nuanced.
Drucker definitely believed in accountability and measurement of results but here’s the advice he gave a CEO in 1990:
“Your first role is the relationship with people, the development of mutual confidence, the creation of a community. This is something that cannot be measured or easily defined. But it is not only a key function, it is one only you can perform.” 1
Drucker’s focus on organisation as community resonates strongly with my former colleague Dr Peter Senge’s insightful observation that: “Leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future”. 2
As Drucker points out above, many things that shape the future of organisations really can’t be measured in any meaningfully objective way.
I’d say some of those things include: team spirit, balance, wisdom, insight, focus, clarity, and value in its wider, non-monetary sense.
In fact, the list of meaningful things that can’t be meaningfully measured probably includes everything that really matters for organisational thriving over the long term.
But deeper than the fact that the truly vital measures are unmeasurable is the seemingly self-evident truth that life, in its infinite wisdom, appears to be expressly set up so that what we find truly meaningful can never be meaningfully measured by others — including bosses, consultants, and HR. 3
Research into motivation and wellbeing has confirmed that Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness are the three “psychological nutriments that are essential for individuals’ adjustment, integrity, and growth.” 4
When someone else seeks to measure and manage your Competence, it puts you under their influence, so you lose Autonomy.
As a result, the Competence no longer feels like it’s yours — therefore its development becomes stunted.
And the imbalanced power dynamic of the relationship (their exercise of control over you) undermines the relationship which impoverishes Relatedness.
If you’ve ever wondered why surveys don’t improve engagement, look no further than their inevitable injury to all three essential psychological nutriments.
The external measurement of individual performance by others reinforces the hogging of decision making by people near the top of the power hierarchy.
This appropriation of the capacity of the community to shape its future by an elite group was the central theme of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management (1911) — the management theory that’s underpinned industrial society for more than a century.
Taylor himself was obsessive compulsive about measurement according to Professor Gareth Morgan of York University, Toronto. 5
Morgan describes how before playing baseball, Taylor would insist the field be measured and marked out perfectly to the inch — seemingly oblivious to how this used up most of the time available to actually play the game.
Taylor was the living breathing embodiment of how measurement sucks the life out of human activity.
It’s time we liberated organisations and the people who work in them from this life-sucking legacy once and for all.
Drucker Institute on Measurement Myopia
In his 1999 book The Dance of Change (p16)
That’s why KPIs often kill performance inadvertently
Ryan, R. M. (1995), “Psychological needs and the facilitation of integrative processes” Journal of Personality, 63, 397-427
Images of Organization (p221)