MEANINGLESS METRICS

Cargo-cult management…

Meaningless metrics are numbers that are measured but serve no real purpose. They are often used to create an illusion of control for incompetent managers.

The most popular meaningless metric is employees’ hours: clock in – clock out.

Is counting hours spent at a workplace always pointless? No. It might have meaning when physical presence is the work. A scarecrow stands in a growing crop field and frightens birds; thus, it works by spending hours.

Yet, hours mean nothing if the endpoint is selling, writing, cleaning, or most activities undertaken to achieve a result.

The fact that a body is present does not imply that the brain is active and the work is being done.

How will you know someone is not just sitting at work and doing nothing? By employing eyes to watch over those bodies? It will be the first step in building a meaningless system around a meaningless metric. These systems usually cost organizations hefty money and take worthlessness to the next level.

I have seen, and you likely have as well, a widely used system that aimed at counting hours but did not objectively mark employees’ time at work—it required employees to fill in the table themselves. The portal was open only for a few days to add sacrament to a useless ritual. A dedicated person sent ominous messages, “Remember to register the previous month’s working time! The portal will close at midnight by the third day of the month!” Creepy.

It was a double useless system, as measuring a meaningless metric did not do that objectively—it demanded an employee to do that—to spend time filling in something she could easily make up. There was also an option to fill in the entire month.

However, the princes among “effective managers” who developed and approved this software made it triple useless. How? Filling it led to nothing.

If you worked extra hours, no one reimbursed you for them. There were no rewards. If your self-reported hours were less than the required amount, you were asked to add the needed amount to the system.

This triple useless system, built around a meaningless metric, not only wasted time but also undermined the meaning of management.

Of course, by “meaningless” or “useless,” we imply no value to employees or the organization. By that, we suggest that it is better to spend fewer resources to achieve the same result or spend the same resources and achieve a better outcome.

However, the existence of meaningless metrics, ever-changing templates, and hard-to-understand officialese means that some people might benefit from it: somebody develops these systems, somebody supports them, somebody generates templates and coefficients, somebody helps translate from officialese to English, etc.

You can quickly test the intentionality by suggesting an easier way to do the same and observing the reaction.

If people pay attention to your initiative, this meaninglessness is likely not deliberate. If they immediately discount any suggestion or react negatively, they might benefit from the inefficiency. Or they may not care at all.

For meaningful — check ECPM.