Measurement Madness: Recognizing and Avoiding the Pitfalls of Performance Measurement - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

DINA GRAY, PhD is a Strategic Business Consultant lecturing on Cranfield University's Executive Education programmes, and she is also Chair of the Regional Advisory Boards for the Innovation Group plc. advising on strategic performance implementation.

PIETRO MICHELI, PhD is Associate Professor of Organizational Performance at Warwick Business School. As a management consultant, he has worked with over 30 organizations, private and public. As a researcher, he has published widely on the subjects of performance measurement and innovation.

ANDREY PAVLOV, PhD is a Lecturer in Business Performance Management at Cranfield School of Management and Director of the Executive MSc in Managing Organisational Performance at Cranfield. He is a regular speaker at conferences around the world, and his work has been published in numerous industry and academic journals.

De la contraportada

Measurement Madness

"What a refreshing read instead of another manual on how to design and deploy measurement systems, this book looks at the real issues associated with measurement and how to avoid 'measurement madness'. A must read for anyone involved in improving their organization's measurement approaches."

Professor Andy Neely, University of Cambridge; author of The Performance Prism

"Measurement drives behaviours in mysterious ways. Human beings seem the one factor that messes up those carefully designed measurement systems.Measurement Madness makes the only sane argument: performance measurement is meant to affect people's behaviours, and functional and dysfunctional behaviours follow certain patterns. If you want your measurement system to work in practice, Gray, Micheli and Pavlov are your guides."

Frank Buytendijk, Research VP at Gartner; author of Performance Leadership

"Performance measurement is at the very core of management. How can anyone be better if they don't know how good they are? Yet, devising a good performance measurement system requires a profound understanding of how people actually behave when they are measured. This book is very welcome, as it is both wise and practical, full of sensible advice and extremely readable."

Professor Nigel Slack, University of Warwick; author of Operations Management

"We tend to assume that a performance measurement system is a tool to check how an organization is doing. In practice, its role is mainly to direct behaviours. This book provides excellent illustrations of how and why such behaviours can end up being very positive or absolutely perverse."

Anna D'Alessandro, CFO at Westminster City Council

"Getting performance measures to work effectively for a business is always a challenge. This book provides great ideas for navigating that tricky path."

Mark Baker, Head of Risk and Financial Planning, Pentland Brands

De la solapa interior

It's an all-too-familiar tale: a well-meaning manager introduces a performance measurement system to motivate employees, increase accountability, and improve results. At first everything seems to be going fine, but, before long, things appear to be a little strange. Employees start to act as if only what they are measured on matters. The number and length of reports increase, but madness ensues as these reports paint a picture of improvement, while overall results start to drop. Sound familiar? If so,Measurement Madness is the book for you.

This book is not another guide on how to implement performance measurement systems; there are already countless books on the subject. However the unintended consequences and dysfunctional behaviours associated with measurement are becoming evermore widespread, as the introduction of performance measurement pervades all organizations and walks of life.

Measurement Madness is an engaging read, full of anecdotes so peculiar you'll hardly believe them. Each one highlights a performance measurement initiative that went wrong, explains why and most importantly shows you how to avoid making the same mistake yourself.

It turns out that performance measurement often fails for quite simple reasons. Managers might choose to measure what is easy to measure rather than what is important; or they might decide to quantify something assuming it won't affect what people do; or they may believe that measurement will give them objective data, whereas they end up triggering even more subjectivity and personal judgment. These avoidable pitfalls have been distilled and addressed inMeasurement Madness, so that you may learn from others' mistakes.

The dangers of poorly designed performance measures are numerous, and even the best how-to guides don't explain how to avoid these pitfalls.Measurement Madness will help you understand whether you're measuring the right things, rewarding the behaviours that deserve rewarding, and whether you are interpreting results in a way that will improve things rather than complicate them. This book will help you to recognize, correct and even avoid common performance measurement pitfalls, including:

• Measuring for the sake of measuring
• Assuming that measurement is an instant fix for performance issues
• Comparing sets of data that have nothing in common and hoping to learn something
• Using targets and rewards to promote certain behaviours, and achieving exactly the opposite ones.

Reading Measurement Madness will enable you to confidently design a performance measurement system, after accounting for the unintended consequences that the system may engender.