Pointless metrics
-
I sometimes question my sanity, but then I have a day like today and I remember that I'm a rock of sanity in an increasingly turbulent sea of madness. It seems to me that the whole of civilization will soon collapse under the weight of meaningless statistics. Today's mantra is "If it can't be measured, it has no value", and what a stupid notion this is; companies, governments, local authorities, schools... you name it, they all collect huge amounts of data and the vast majority of it is completely and utterly useless. But it's not only useless it's also dangerous: if you're busily analysing how many paper-clips were used in the last month, who then is keeping an eye on your sales which have just dropped 15%? Madness. Where did this notion come from? Why did it come into being? When did it come into being? I asked these three questions of three jumped up MBA's today, in what would prove to be a fairly free and frank meeting. The answer? Blank looks. I know my industry like the back of my hand. I've forgotten more about it than most people will ever know, and I do not tolerate fools gladly - especially not the jumped up type. So when one of these simpletons brought up the subject of quantifying a hugely insignificant part of their business, I simply asked, "You do realise that what you're talking about represents less than 0.1% of your annual turnover? You do realise that if you spent any more than five seconds looking at that data it would cost the business more than twice its worth? You do realise that this would be a complete waste of time and you'd be better off analysing something of worth?" Blank looks. And so I think I managed to answer my own questions: this idiocy came about when jumped-up guff talking morons, with their shiny MBA's and no actual talent for anything moved into positions requiring business know-how, knowledge, acumen, common sense, skill and a bit more drive than it takes to produce a nice looking business process diagram or a colourful chart in Excel. The bad news? I think they're here to stay.
It's also that many people like placing themselves above the rest - provides them with the esteem (and not only) they lack - and one way of doing that is looking a process from the grand perspective (mainly statistically) and thinking that they have a clearer picture of how well things work over a spread aspect of the business and over a large period of time. Another post in this threat named a few companies that were doing fine since the MBAs took over and possibly helped the close. I bet that up until the last moment statistics may well have shown that the overall was good and there was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately people study and get degrees because THEY need them, NOT the business they work at. So the Where, Why, When this notion started if fairly simple to understand. It started because there are people who wish to receive the respect simply for being good looking, sharp dressed, cool and having stored knowledge that they never put to good and meaningful use for anyone. With the IT so widely available, anyone with Excel and an MBA can do it (and get away with it). PS: We don't use paper clips but staples ..... OMG, WHAT SHOULD WE DO ???? :laugh: