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November 1, 2008

What Matters versus What Counts, Encore

Any time you're busy with analysis, construction or movement, you're working on "distinctions". Such efforts generally result in ideas like Part X not Part Y or more vs. less; newer vs. older; or near vs. far (and here vs. there) ... These general differences each go on to be both specified and named with much more precision, for particular situations.

These efforts aren't happening by accident. So we often take it for granted that we should really bother seriously with their outcomes. But this default attitude might be a mistake.

Now that John Bogle's new book Enough is published, one of the fundamental concepts underlying archestra's separated definitions of "value" versus "worth" will be in the spotlight on a multinational basis for a while.

Outside of the book, but to recap archestra notes, there are a number of ways to summarize the working idea involved, such as the three cases below. In all of them, there is the underlying base dynamic that some kind of effort, let's call it work, is producing some measured distinction -- more... better... enough, or whatever -- that didn't exist before the work was done.

But all of the cases point at the need for understanding that unless we know what matters, counting by that measure is always possible but risks being (at least) irrelevant or even (at most) irresponsible.

The Who Cares Case: In this instance, unless a distinction causes us to consider each element it creates in some way different from before, the distinction would not be "significant"... But if the distinction is significant then we say it has value. Still, the value that it has may be irrelevant to some parties, while crucial to other parties. So that same value has a different worth to one party versus the other. The problem, then, is in diligent pursuit of a worthless value.

The Hero Case: in this instance, the usual reference is the old saying "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." On that note, first consider the ersatz "Government Employee's Credo" which says:

We the Willing,
Led by the Unknowing,
are doing the Impossible
for the Ungrateful.

We have done so much,
for so long,
with so little,
that we are now Qualified
to do Anything
with Nothing.

The issue being described, by the largely "invisible" public service workforce, is really the issue of character, which is often described as "the quality you choose to exemplify when nobody is watching". This is pointing at the decision to pursue the correct value, especially in the face of substantial opportunity (or worse, pressure such as from politics, greed or fear) to avoid responsibility for pursuing it.

The Do the Right Work versus Do the Work Right Case: In this case, the issue comes up in so-called "performance" measures, where confusion between compliance and progress is rife. The classic examples today are problems such as "learning to test well" versus "acquiring actionable knowledge"; the pre-crash share price of Enron; and of course the ever popular joining up with the legions of "the unhappy rich". Scorekeeping is seemingly inevitable, but there's nothing better than keeping the wrong kind of score to put new clothes on the emperor.

In short, value is what counts, but worth is what matters. Sadly, so much of what appears to be valuable can easily turn out to be worthless.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at November 1, 2008 9:33 AM