Measurement Madness: Recognizing and Avoiding the Pitfalls of Performance Measurement

praise for measurement madness "What a refreshing read – instead of another manual on how to design and deploy measurement systems, this book looks at the real issues associated with measurement and how to avoid 'measurement madness'. A must read for anyone involved in improving their organization's measurement approaches." —Professor Andy Neely, University of Cambridge; author of The Performance Prism "Measurement drives behaviours in mysterious ways. Human beings seem the one factor that messes up those carefully designed measurement systems. Measurement Madness makes the only sane argument: performance measurement is meant to affect people's behaviours, and functional and dysfunctional behaviours follow certain patterns. If you want your measurement system to work in practice, Gray, Micheli and Pavlov are your guides." —Frank Buytendijk, Research VP at Gartner; author of Performance Leadership "Performance measurement is at the very core of management. How can anyone be better if they don't know how good they are? Yet, devising a good performance measurement system requires a profound understanding of how people actually behave when they are measured. This book is very welcome, as it is both wise and practical, full of sensible advice and extremely readable." —Professor Nigel Slack, University of Warwick; author of Operations Management "We tend to assume that a performance measurement system is a tool to check how an organization is doing. In practice, its role is mainly to direct behaviours. This book provides excellent illustrations of how and why such behaviours can end up being very positive or absolutely perverse." —Anna D'Alessandro, CFO at Westminster City Council "Getting performance measures to work effectively for a business is always a challenge. This book provides great ideas for navigating that tricky path." —Mark Baker, Head of Risk and Financial Planning, Pentland Brands

Part I INTRODUCTION 1 The Road to Insanity 2 Performance and Measurement Part II PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT 3 Measuring For Measurement′s Sake 4 All I Need is the Right Measure! 5 Comparing Performance Part III PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT 6 Target Turmoil 7 Gaming and Cheating 8 Hoping for A but Rewarding Something Completely Different 9 Failing Rewards and Rewarding Failure Part IV CONCLUSIONS 10 Will Measurement Madness ever be Cured?  References Index

Dina Gray is Programme Manager for the Cranfield University MSc in Managing Organisational Performance. She is also a Non-Executive Director for the B-Live Foundation. Pietro Micheli is a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield's Centre for Business Performance and a founding member of the Evidence-Based Management Collaborative in the US. Andrey Pavlov is Director of Cranfield's Executive MSc in Managing Organizational Performance.