Many years ago, while working for a fortune 500 company, I was assigned the role of "Efficiency Manager".  I was plucked from the general labor pool and moved into a psuedo human resource role.  This was a great opportunity for me as it put me right next to upper management in the facility.  I had a chance to learn how management operated, how they thought, and how the machinery of a large comany works.  I also established relationships with management that could not have otherwise existed.

Although somewhat disappointed at the exposure as to how base the thoughts of men and women are - even in uppor management, I learned a lot.  Although, not all the lessons learned were the intended ones.

Every day as the employees worked their production was recorded.  At the end of each day this information was transferred to me for entry into a spreadsheet.  From this information, I generated reports based on standards that were established when this system was established.  The reports were given to the line managers to "assist the employees in having sufficient production" and to "develop more effecient procedures".

When the system was first established, we were told that this process would never be used to eliminate people, only to find more efficient ways of doing the various monitored jobs.

As it turned out (and as expected), often the most efficient way of doing a job was to remove the dead wood.  My production was always high when I worked the lines, often reaching over 100% of the standard.  But there were many co-workers who had trouble meeting 60% of standard.  Most of the 60% people were gone within months.  These production scores were also used to determine who got raises and who did not.

In my last role as an IT consultant, after 6 years, the IT director decided to impliment a ticketing system.  This was to be used to track problems and record solutions.  Because it was established as a troublshooting documentation system, all that I worked on and all the research I was doing was not accounted for in the ticketing system.  Nor was it designed to be.  At about that time, the newly promoted IT director developed several problems with me:

1. Since he had recently accepted a counter offer while exploring a new opportunity, he has found out that I was interested in his position if it was available.
2. A matter in my personal life, which I resolved, paralleled matters in his personal live, which he resolved differently, became a problem to him.  My presence was a continual reminder of his failure and the pain he went through because of his decisions.
3. I was only 40% under his direction prior to his promotion to Director, and 60% under the direction of the Retail Marketing deptartment. A situation he always resented.

These and other issues created a hostile political environment between us.  I was warned about this growing problem by several people in the company.  I was under the impression that we were friends, and he was watching my back, as I did for him repeatedly.  I didn't know that he was just sighting up the best place to put the knife.

He used the lack of entries in the new ticket system as justification to upper managment to get rid of me because of "Poor performance".  Now, mind you that I had received a $5000 bonus a couple of weeks earlier for my exceptional performance.  After the decision was delivered to me, I gave a copy of my resume, which listed all the projects that I had worked on, to the management team above the IT director.  The COO indicated that he wished he had known that information before the decision was made, but because he did not want to undermine the IT directors authority, he said the decision has already been made.  So, with 30 days notice, I left and, miraculously, 30 days later found the position that I currently work in.

That last position remains a sore spot for me, so when I discuss some issues I tend to run on a tangent with it.  The basic idea remains that limited metrics were used in a political fasion.  Not to improve procedure or policy, but as a political tool.  Also that collected metrics are not always accurate or complete.  They are always subject to a biased interpretation.

In my next position, there is a lot of metrics that were gathered.  But are they of use in determining performance?  They may be useful in determining need for additional head count, but not necessarily for permormance.

There were many engineers in my department that work trouble tickets.  These engineers started at different times of the day and end their shifts at staggered times as well.  Some of them worked opposing 12hr schedules for front-half/back-half of the week.

Ticket load varied at different times of the day and on different days.  So not all engineers were exposed to the same ticket opportunities or types.  Engineers that started earlier tended to get more tickets than those that started later.  Those that worked longer shifts tended to get more tickets in a day and harder ones to resolve than those that worked shorter shifts.

Management ran a report indicating how many tickets are worked in a month per engineer, how many minutes out of each day were accounted for in each those tickets, and how many tickets were worked in a day, plus some other metrics.

Now this seems like pretty objective information, but it leaves out key elements.  It does not give any indication as to the difficulty or severity of these tickets.  It did not take into account the variences in incoming ticket rate and type at different times of day in relationship to start/stop times.  It did not account for time spent on assigned tasks.  It did not account for  training and professional improvement (a percentage of our time was allocated to this within the job descriptions and company policy).  And more...

Engineers, however, were being rated, judged and merit increases assessed based on these numbers.  In addition, these numbers are a constant source of negative re-inforcement, and rarely a source of  positive. 

You might think that I was a low producer by the way I am addressing this.  I was not, I was a top producer in my department, often the top producer.  My ticket reviews were some of the best in the dept.  I was not the only engineer in the department that felt as if tyranical pressue was being laid upon him or the team unjustly through the use of biased metrics.  It was pretty much a general consensus, based on the scuttle arount the coffee maker.

I use these three examples of micro-managed metrics collections to demonstrate that they are not a positive influence.  It is rare that a manager armed with metrics of perceived performance will ever use positive re-inforcement to increase the productivity and moral of the team he serves (rules over, more often).  Because the standard of excellence that all are going to be based on is that which is established by the top performers, usually without consideration to additional variables that may have significant impact in the metrics being collected.

In some environments it may be necessary to micromanage the employee to ensure that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing and that the jobs assigned to them are getting done within the allocated time frame.  Within a team of seasoned professionals, it is an insult to employee's integrity.  Micromanagement of seasoned professionals breeds an air of contempt toward that supervisor along with an air of distrust between staff members.  Everyone was watching their back and some were stabbing each other in the back. 

Why?  Because management had used negative re-inforcement as a tool to control staff.

Let me explain an example from the positive re-enforcement side.  When I first started on that team, it was very team focused and honor based.  Everyone knew what their responsibilities were.  Everyone helped each other to excel.  We watched each others tickets and gave assistance to ensure that all the bases were covered.  We ensured that cross training was being provided from the customer assigned engineers.  Management gave positive re-enforcement.  When a staff member went out of his way to get the job done he was publicly acknowledged for it.  Often I was called into the office and given a "spot-bonus" for my performance.  When we worked long hours beyond a reasonable shift, we were given compensation days off to ensure that we were adequately rested and had a family or personal life outside the office.   There were times when I was told to take the next day off because of the extra work that I had done that week.  I wanted to come to work.  I enjoyed working with the team.  I wanted to provide the best possible to those customers we served.  When something went wrong, we sat down and discussed it.  We didn't look for a scape goat.  As a team we accepted responsibility for the error, and as a team, we corrected it.

No one on my team had seen a "spot-bonus" in my last year and a half.  No one on my team had heard references to spot bonuses in the last year.  Team outings had not occurred in over a year.  There were no compensation days and a good job, or extra-ordinary effort was rarely commended.

The positive re-enforcement tools were gone.  Replaced by the limited system of metrics and reports.    Punishment versus reward.  But in addition to that, moral was down, commitment was down, the sense of team and companionship was down.  And more important, it felt like customer approval was down.  Employee turnover, however, was up.

When the sh!t flows down hill, it builds momentum.  Eventually it hits a fan, and everyone feels the impact - including those up hill. 

Management is always a reflection of their team and their team's ability to produce an excellent product.  Whther that product be a service or a physical item.  Management would be better served by producing a good team.  A bad team will always result in a bad product.

Can management turn things around?  I don't know.  maybe..  First they would need to acknowledge that what they were doing wasn't working, and then embrace a different strategy.  They would need to take responsibility for the situation rather than blaming various team members.  There were some exceptional engineers on my team, men whose impact was felt everyday.  Some of them probably won't be here in another year.  Others will stick it out for a few years hoping for improvment. 

The one thing you can count on is that a team manager is the team leader.  The team will always follow his example.  If he is a slob, his team will become a slob.  If he addresses his team negatively, his team will respond in like kind.  If he acts without compassion, his team will act without compassion to him and each other.  If he is just looking for numbers, his team may give him numbers - but they will be those that the minimum standard requires and no more.  If he gives them heart, though, they will respond and he will have a strong pro-active team.  But he must give the positive re-enforcement or he will have no team.  A manager without a team quickly finds himself as a "freelancer". 

After many years of work in various industries, I have found that those managers who gave positive re-enforcement had happier employees, were happier themselves, had higher productivity, better marriages, better relationships with their children, better health, lower employee turnover and better incomes than those who chide, degrade, or provide other means of negative re-enforcement.

The bottom line numbers are not the bottom line.  The bottom line is a larger picture that embraces multiple facets. Some of these are intangible and can never be quantified.  Unless management can take hold of this larger picture and release the old school mentality of the "task master" relationship between a slave and his owner, the manager will fail.  His team will fail.  As a result, the company will fail.