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March 14, 2005

Measurement and the mythology of Execution

"Mythology" is when prescription substitutes for description. On a day to day basis in the operating environment, we see it frequently, when, due to past experience, something we thought should "be there" is presumed to be there - setting an expectation that is basically an emotionally charged exaggeration.

Such expectations challenge measurement's role as the basis of management. Often measurement devolves into looking for what we want to find instead of for what is there - that is, prescribing instead of describing, and making the facts fit the expectation. In management-by-mythology, wishful thinking rules even more than measurement.

But recently, a new standard of advice has swept business management communities, advising that the way to restore objectively meaningful measurement is to focus on "execution" and measure execution. For a business, this might actually help things by further emphasizing the discovery of "causes" for the effects that the business wants from its activity. After all, desirable effects are the business's most important wishful thinking, although made significant only by the means and motivation applied to pursuing it. The new management focus is mainly one of correlating defined action ("inputs") with defined consequences ("outcomes") instead of with products ("outputs").

The likely point of failure in this attention to "execution" will be an urge to think of execution as activity instead of as result. Execution is what is achieved by activity, whereas the activity itself is operation. Managers who optimize operational consequences will be working on the realities of execution; managers who optimize action efficiency may only be working on quality and must commit that quality to a cause.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at March 14, 2005 6:35 AM

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