In measuring performance, data is essential – but don’t forget the people
I recently had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion at our European Horizons conference, the topic of which was “Which Quality metrics should you be measuring and how?”. I was joined on stage by three experienced Compliance and Quality professionals from the pharmaceutical, food & drink and power generation industries.
Our conversation started around stories of cost savings, performance improvements, which metrics worked and which didn’t, but we quickly followed a thread of human aspects of measurement and performance. Who sets metrics? Who reviews them? Adoption. Engagement. Culture. Change. Over the course of an hour, we spoke less about the success of numbers and more about the people behind them and their motivation for improvement.
The panel discussion sent me back to my management books and, in particular, The Principles of Scientific Management, written by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911. A mechanical engineer turned consulting engineer, Taylor’s seminal book put forward his theories and principles, at the core of which was the view that every single act of every workman could be reduced to science and therefore managers could, in a scientific and systematic way, adjust and optimise variables to produce more with the same or less inputs.
Taylor was a man of his time and his execution of his methods and views could now be regarded as inhumane, condescending, too mechanistic and unsympathetic to employees. However, though our industries and economies have evolved considerably since the early 20th century, performance measurement remains front and centre in all our organisations.
We now operate in a more complex “knowledge economy”, supported by new technologies in an era of artificial intelligence and machine learning, but arguably the bigger change since Taylor’s day is the shift in perspective in how we connect our people to that process of measurement. We recognise people are at the heart of all organisations and the definition of success for an organisation is shaped by how we engage with employees in the goal and metric setting process.
Rather than a top-down focus on standardising human behaviour to measure output and efficiency, employees and teams need to be part of that conversation about the overall system and to have the autonomy and opportunity to define and act upon what is important and how it should be measured.
When I asked our panel to sum up their thoughts, the theme of people was clear:
“Ensure what you are measuring is aligned with the longer-term business objectives, but more importantly your staff, the wider supply chain and customers need to be 100% part of the conversation of definition.”
“It’s hard to set a good metric, so be creative and think outside the box in defining what productivity, Quality and success measures actually mean for you and your team.”
“Don’t measure in isolation – ensure you are working across the system and with each other, not pulling or measuring in opposite directions.”
There’s no doubt that data and analysis is an essential part of the modern organisation and the move towards evidence-based decision making is gathering pace with the rise of AI and machine learning. However, collecting data can often be expensive, it has the trapdoor of misuse and more data isn’t always better.
As Quality professionals we have an obligation to drive our organisations towards a view of performance of the overall system. This can be achieved by engaging people across the complete business value chain to be central in the definition, collection and measurement process, otherwise we run the risk of short-term behaviours, employee resistance, competing factions and contradictory goals.
If metrics are chosen carefully, then, in the process of their analysis, managers, employees, customers and suppliers can work together to make the right decisions and take the right actions to realise their shared view of organisational success.
George Hall
As Product Manager for Q-Pulse, George works closely with users to understand the challenges that they and their organisation face day-to-day and to make sure that Q-Pulse continues to support them in meeting the needs of their industry and their customers.