Goodhart or Godot?

"WHAT GETS MEASURED, GETS DONE!”

Goodhart's law states that "the introduction of measurement and control distorts the information needed to implement that measurement and control". In short, as soon as the organization adopts outcome targets (numerical objectives for the achievement of task mandates), which it will measure through job performance indicators, the meaning of the activity's goals will immediately tend to change. Staff, who will generally be held accountable for the outcome of the exercise, after completion of their task, because they will be compensated for the evaluations made following the job mandates given to them at the start of each project, will not strive to make their share of the overall output more efficient but to limit their contribution to the level of the objective set.

In management, this translates into "What gets measured, gets done!" Management, for example, will have instructed customer service staff to take care of their customer relationships to raise the level of customer satisfaction, while management itself will tend to reward those who generate (additional) sales at all costs. Customer satisfaction will be ignored, and sales will be forced. Ultimately, the return on the year's activity will decline instead of rising to the expected level. The disconnect between the achievement objective and the result obtained will come from the fact that the work performance measurement announced (the indicator) at the beginning of the project will not have been linked to the goal pursued by (the management of) the organization at the task performance evaluation stage.

MATHEMATICISE OR HUMANIZE THE WORKSPACE?

There are many examples of contradiction between discourse and reality in task situations, the higher up the hierarchy of workstations in the productive organization, the more numerous the examples. The strangest thing is that top managers, who think they know everything about performance and about their own organization, are very often underperforming themselves. They articulate vision, mission, and values, but fuel the setting of financial objectives: the reduction of operating costs, the piecemeal measurement of final production, and the maximization of added value in the hands of shareholders. They mathematicise the workspace and make task time more flexible, whereas they should humanize inter-individual relationships in the organization, to lower the frustration threshold of the staff, and, in so doing, increase the level of job satisfaction of the staff. It is the level of satisfaction that triggers, through the return of people's commitment to the task, the higher operating result of the exercise.

Staff and managers don't give a damn... unless they squeeze out all the juice they can. And since job applicants throughout the internal work structure are scrambling to avoid unemployment, why should managers bother trying to find better management modes, methods, and practices for staff... disposable after use? This will not prevent them, in the economic delirium salons that are the big business associations, from proclaiming their subscription to the precepts of the human-first-asset of the postmodern organization. Words... that engender the ills from which the organization suffers at its base!

A REVERSE GOODHART LAW

Most managers consider themselves to be high performers, even if they must take ownership of the work product of their staff to demonstrate this. However, a great deal of academic research has demonstrated that the adequacy between the degree of performance on the job and the level of remuneration of managers was correlatively ... almost non-existent. Could it be that their status in the hierarchy of decision-making in an organization would de facto result in the application of Goodhart's reverse law? A law that would have it that the absence of information on actual job performance and the existence of a critical evaluation of the work performance of leaders would lead to the unconditional affirmation of excellence in their work. In a way, this is "self-management" automatism, unless it is "autosuggestion" paternalism!

GODOT OR GOODHART?

Let's stop waiting for Godot and realize that Goodhart does exist!