Henry Mintzberg wrote an article titled If You Can’t Measure It, You’d Better Manage It (28 May 2015).
« Someone I know once asked a most senior British civil servant why his department had to do so much measuring. His reply: “What else can we do when we don’t know what’s going on?” Did he ever try getting on the ground to find out what’s going on? And then using judgment to assess that? (Remember judgment? It’s still in the dictionary.) »
« Measuring as a replacement for managing has done enormous damage—undermining the souls of so many of our institutions (as discussed in last week’s TWOG). Think of how much education has been killed by assuming that we can measure what a child learns in a classroom. (I defy anyone to measure learning. You are reading this TWOG: please measure what you are learning.) Must we always deflect teaching from engaging students to examining them? »
« Health care has likewise suffered from this cult of obsessive measuring… This “managing-it-by-measuring-it” has been destroying companies left and right. Amidst all the numbers, where are the new products, what’s the state of the culture? »
« Measuring as a complement to managing is a fine idea: measure what you can; take seriously what you can’t; and manage both thoughtfully. In other words: If you can’t measure it, you’ll have to manage it. If you can measure it, you’ll especially have to manage it. Have we not had enough of leadership by remote control: sitting in executive offices and running the numbers—all that deeming and downsizing? »
Henry Mintzberg is the author of:
- Understanding Organizations…Finally! (2023 – 218 pages)
- Bedtime Stories for Managers (2019 – 200 pages)
- The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (2013 – 480 pages)
- Simply Managing: What Managers Do – and Can Do Better (2013 – 208 pages)
- Managers Not MBAs (2004 – 500 pages)
Articles of Interest 