If you're a manager, how can you tell how good a job you're doing? Take a survey? Do a 360 assessment?
When you measure something, you influence it. For instance, investors value companies according to their profits. Knowing this, many executives make decisions that favor short-term profits over the company's long-term well being, and some actually fudge the figures.
Applied to organizations, this phenomenon is called the Hawthorne Effect — when people know you're measuring something, they try to make the measurement turn out "right." Most measurements of employee satisfaction run afoul of this phenomenon. How can you measure without Hawthorne distortion?
Begin by looking at what you're measuring. The good news: we measure way too much. We try to measure the immeasurable, and we use those measurements to try to control the uncontrollable. By reducing our overall measurement effort, and accounting for Hawthorne distortion, we can measure less and get a lot more value from the effort. Here are three keys to effective measurement:
- Measure only what is objectively measurable. Judgment isn't objectively measurable.
- Measure only what you hope to control. Have in mind actions you can take that directly influence trends in whatever you measure.
- Understand the Hawthorne Effect: if people know they're being measured, they alter their behavior to optimize the measurement.
Too often, we try
to measure the
immeasurable to
control the
uncontrollableThe name "Hawthorne Effect" comes from some early work (1927-1932) on organizational measurement done at the Western Electric plant in Hawthorne, Illinois, where management tried to determine optimum levels of factory-floor lighting. Because the employees knew about the study, they responded to each adjustment in light level by increasing productivity.
But the Hawthorne Effect can be much broader. In one approach to controlling software quality, we measure defects by severity category. Since software isn't releasable unless defect counts are below acceptable levels, there is pressure to downgrade the severity of any defects in categories that are over threshold.
Measuring with discretion is one route around Hawthorne. Here are some trends you can measure outside the awareness of most employees. Most must be measured per capita per month. Their interpretation depends on your particular situation, though some are obvious.
- Voluntary turnover
- Number of hits to corporate gripe sites
- Posted Dilbert cartoons
- Fraction of posted Dilbert cartoons that involve Ratbert the HR manager
- Percentage use of sick days and vacation days
- Average usage-hours of parking spaces
- Employer-funded education credits earned
- Number of complaints per month about peers
- Number of "Tweaking CC" emails (see "The Tweaking CC," Point Lookout for February 7, 2001)
- Number of known feuds
- Fraction of posted Dilbert cartoons that involve the pointy-haired manager
- Fraction of desks with Dilbert desk calendars
- Vending machine candy consumption
- Percentage of meetings rescheduled
- Project lateness, in dollar-days per capita
Would you like to know trends in any of these measurements? Can you think of other measurements you'd rather make? Top
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Keep a Not-To-Do List
- Unless you execute all your action items immediately, they probably end up on your To-Do list. Since
they're a source of stress, you'll feel better if you can find a way to avoid acquiring them. Having
a Not-To-Do list reminds you that some things are really not your problem.
Retention
- When the job market eases for job seekers, we often see increases in job shifting, as people who've
been biding their time make the jump. Typically, they're the people we most want to keep. How can we
reduce this source of turnover?
Guidelines for Sharing "Resources"
- Often, team members belong to several different teams. The leaders of teams whose members have divided
responsibilities must sometimes contend with each other for the efforts and energies of the people they
share. Here are some suggestions for sharing people effectively.
Getting Value from Involuntary Seminars
- Whatever your organizational role, from time to time you might find yourself attending seminars or presentations
involuntarily. The value you derive from these "opportunities" depends as much on you as on
the presenter.
The Big Power of Little Words
- Big, fancy words, like commensurate or obfuscation, tend to be more noticed than the
little everyday words, like yet or best. That might be why the little words can be
so much more powerful, steering conversations where their users want them to go.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming April 30: On Planning in Plan-Hostile Environments: II
- When we finally execute plans, we encounter obstacles. So we find workarounds or adjust the plans. But there are times when nothing we try gets us back on track. When this happens for nearly every plan, we might be working in a plan-hostile environment. Available here and by RSS on April 30.
And on May 7: Subject Matter Bullying
- Most workplace bullying tactics have analogs in the schoolyard — isolation, physical attacks, name-calling, and rumor-mongering are common examples. Subject matter bullying might be an exception, because it requires expertise in a sophisticated knowledge domain. And that's where trouble begins. Available here and by RSS on May 7.
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