Valuable… or just valued?
It’s a discipline we learn at the start of careers, and
A comfort we lean on when confusion arises.
“What is it the metrics are telling us?” we ask.
For a world we can measure, means far fewer surprises.
Then one day we learn what that old mantra exhorts us:
“What is measured is valued!” and that pleases us greatly.
So, we seek for more metrics to measure our progress.
For to know that we’re ‘better than’ satisfies us innately.
Yet what many omit in their measuring and logistics
Is the falseness inherent in that mantra so admirable.
Yes, you might come to value the things that you measure.
But because behaviour’s measurable doesn’t make it more valuable!
When you judge folk’s behaviour with metrics and KPI’s,
When you use these to mete out your grand adulation;
That may make business simpler and bring sense of order. But
What it gains in rationale, it loses in inspiration.
Letting logic and metrics to govern and rule us
Soon shapes us like others, with very little redeeming.
Useful these tools are, yet they fail to deliver
A business that’s full of real purpose and meaning.
So, if you want to gather bright people around you,
Whether clients or services or your future team members,
You’re going to need more than regaling with metrics.
You’d better create what each rejoices and remembers.
You’d better create what each rejoices and remembers.
