Rodent Regatta

can be defined in a variety of ways. We define it as:

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  keeping up with the Jones’s


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  materialism as a path to happiness


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  everyone knows we’ve got to get more


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  climbing the corporate ladder to say you did it


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  working all day and going home too tired to pursue your dreams


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  letting the liberal media tell you how things really are

There’s more, but that gives you the essence. One of the corporate myths has to do with measurement, compensation and ’getting results.’ Nine out of ten organizations don’t have metrics that really cause the results they seek. In fact, those metrics cause results that have to then be ’fixed.’ Steven and Joel capture those notions with these posts!

Measurement Dysfunction. ”As a result, workers began doing just about anything to get customers off the phone” Boy, does that sound familiar. ”If you’re in a helpdesk or call center, for example, and you’re measuring your people on the number of calls they’re taking, that’s what they’re going to do – take calls. [16-Jan]
Today, Joel writes about the oft-seen but (mostly) un-planned-for effect that measurements can have upon individuals’ and organizations’ performance. We call it ”getting just what you measure,” and too often the measurements are the only thing looked at by mid-level management. This ”metric of the month” leaves employees feeling powerless to really do what’s best for the customer; when they do they get ’dinged’ by their manager for making the weekly stats look bad. Beat that horse too often and he’ll just give up on the customer entirely.
What? You don’t want your customers given up on? The trick is to find the measurements that really encourage the behaviour you want… not just the ones that are easiest for ”the system” to give you (like number of calls taken, or time per call). [Steven’s Weblog]