What polls, police radars and the Hawthorne experiments have in common

There is an election campaign in my home province of Ontario. As often happens during elections, somebody raises the issue about whether public opinion polls influence the outcomes of elections (such as in this article). If only measurements involving people could produce objective information. People and the way they react to measurements make this very [...]

The Operational Dashboard that had no Key Performance Indicators

The “dashboard” is often used as a metaphor by business writers and consultants to explain to managers that they need performance measurement and key performance indicators for their business, just like they do for their cars. Otherwise they’ll drive their business off the road, they (falsely) argue. The problem is, the dashboards on cars don’t [...]

The importance of structural information

Business writers and consultants today typically advise managers to calculate indices and percentages to measure the state of their enterprises. For example, Kaplan and Norton, in the “Balanced Scorecard”, suggest measuring “strategic information availability” with the “percentage of processes with real-time quality, cycle time, and cost feedback available” and “percentage of customer-facing employees having on-line [...]