Stop quantifying. And start performing.

MEASUREMENT DEHUMANIZES PERFORMANCE

Kaplan and Norton are the undisputed masters of the Balanced Scorecard, an instrument for quantifying the alleged performance of an organization. Although they deal with a different issue, their approach to performance follows the same contours as Hammer and Champy's proposal for reengineering administrative processes. Performance measurement is dehumanizing in both cases. The turnover takes precedence over the person at work.

Yet performance is a judgment on the performance of the activity carried out, as assessed over the entire life cycle of the organization. In contrast, the administrative process is only one way of rendering the task over a given year. The state of mind at work, which results from the satisfaction derived from the task and the conditions under which it is carried out, stimulates the motivation of the personnel in charge of the job and leads to the organization's operating results. But it is the improvements in business management modes, methods and practices that generate performance in the organization. Short-sighted management confuses the result (fiscal year) with performance (entire life cycle) as a measure of performance on the organization's activity.

THE MULTIPLICATION OF INDICATORS CONFUSES MORE THAN IT ADDS TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS

Dozens of businesses, public organizations, and community agencies have adopted the Kaplan-Norton model, with their eyes closed or almost closed, on the understanding that performance improvement was achieved by measuring, and therefore monitoring, the activity being carried out. To cite just one example, Marks & Spencer, which for decades was one of the jewels of British entrepreneurship, experienced very serious problems of financial profitability immediately after the company started using turnover as a measure of its own performance. Fortunately, Simon Marks and Israel Sieff realized "that multiple metrics were not enough". In a highly decentralized organization, top-tier objectives required that all employees adhere to the organization's values and subscribe to its performance objectives.

THE COMPANY IS NOT A FACTORY TO BE PRODUCED, BUT A SOCIAL SPACE TO BE LIVED AND VIBRATED IN

Like the dwelling, which is not a "machine to live in" (Le Corbusier), the company is not a "factory to produce" (Hamel). The work environment is a social space, constituted with the aim of achieving, through mutuality of risk and sharing of benefits, a range of objectives commonly subscribed to by management and staff. The use of integrated ways and means of accomplishing the task facilitates the execution of individual and collective mandates of the task. However, without intelligence in the treatment of stakeholders in the organization's business, devolution of work adds nothing that meets the smallest requirement of optimizing the resources required to generate increased profit for the business over the long term.

COSTING IS NOT PERFORMING

The unfortunate thing is that the dashboard has been taken over by accountants in the organization. The aim was to ensure that performance was measured in a way that was financially recognized. The management of private companies, as a way of organizing paid-up capital, has been entrusted to "financiers at heart" who have no other idea than to add value to the shareholder as the first (and often the only) principle of business management. This gives in the way of the figure, and not in the straightforwardness of the intentions to improve the general framework of management of the conditions of the task in the organization. The organization does not give more in performance, because it fails to be responsible, advantageous, and sustainable for the staff. To quantify (to measure finances) has never been to perform (to improve living conditions in a productive environment)!