That’s Right!
Perfection of means and confusion of ends seems to characterize our age. — Albert Einstein
In management, what you measure is what you get, right?
Well, if that was so straightforward, a set of meticulously designed KPIs, with subsequent tracking, would do the trick.
What you see instead is that people optimizing one metric can ruin the business. That the first thing they try to figure out is how to ‘game’ the metric. That human motivation is rarely purely transactional. That achieving the measured target doesn’t guarantee the desired outcome. And, most worryingly, that unmeasured outcomes get ignored or downplayed.
As Block warned, ‘if we believe something does not exist unless we measure it, then we put aside: love, intuition, art and philosophy.’ At work, we might add collaboration to the list.
How about an idea to use ‘joint KPIs’ to improve collaboration between company functions?
Well, the problem here is that tension between functions is an inherent — and therefore unavoidable — part of organizational work. Not to be solved, but coped with. The system is not really broken. It was built that way. For a reason. Conflicting KPIs are inevitable. They are not necessarily a flaw but a feature. They are the mechanism for maximizing functional expertise in daily work. KPIs are therefore neither a problem, nor a solution, to issues in cross-functional collaboration.
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If ‘joint KPIs’ are not a solution, what could be?
First, if you’re in charge, do not let anybody hide behind their functional KPIs. Do not refrain from politely calling out misuse, exposing offenders. Tactfully, but forcefully, shame them.
Second, shift your energy from trying to remove conflicts to exposing them for resolution. As Senge observed, ‘in strong organizations, conflict becomes productive and turns into new solutions.’ Cooperation isn’t the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict.
Sales tell their side of the story — you say ‘that’s right.’ Supply Chain tell their side of the story — you say ’that’s right.’ They exclaim ‘we cannot both be right’ — you say ‘that’s right’!
Your job is not to decide which function is right. It is to make both functions right enough to be heard — and wrong enough to have to listen.
And thirdly, when there are indications that XF work stumbles, slow down rather than accelerating. Do fewer things but do them better, longer and, most importantly, ‘more together.’
Even if there is mess out there, you do not have to add to it by forcing new KPIs. Make peace with the fact that the default state of any organization is chaos at best and hostility between functions at worst.
And among all that, there are always a few people who try hard to bring order, structure, and civility to how tensions are resolved and turned into decisions. Throw your hierarchical weight behind them, rather than the KPIs.
