7 Deadly Sins of Peformance Measurement

I recently attended an executive management class at MIT. They provided a copy of the most recent MIT Management Review which had a really interesting and relevant article on performance measurement. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2007/spring/02/pdf/48302W.pdf

The 7 Deadly Sins are Vanity, Provincialism, Narcissism, Laziness, Pettiness, Inanity and Frivolity. You are probably thinking what the heck does that mean? The article gives great examples from real world companies on how each of these can be a down fall.

Vanity - selecting only measurements that will inevitably make management and the company look good

Provincialism - allowing departments to measure narrowly within their own boudaries or silos which leads to suboptimization

Narcissism - measuring from one's own point of view rather than the customers

Laziness - assuming one knows what is important to measure without giving it adequate thougth or effort

Pettiness - measuring only a small component of what matters

Inanity - implementing metrics wihtout giving any thoguht to the consequences of thes metrics on human behavior and enterprise performance.

Frivolity - the sin of not being serious about measurement in the first place

There are great examples in the article about how each of these can adversely impact the business. It really made me rethink our approach to measurement and ask all the other business unit leaders to give it some thought for discussion at our next meeting.