Did you hit your numbers?

It is a common challenge. You must make your numbers.

You must smash your sales target

You must slash your budget

You must decimate your waiting times

If you’ve hit your numbers then you’ve met your performance goals. Numbers and performance are synonymous.

But the numbers are only a proxy for performance

Performance is multifaceted. To really perform you need to please customers and stakeholders, regulators and employees. You should reduce costs and reduce time, then increase revenues and retention. Performance has many aspects.

It is very hard to measure performance, so we use proxy measures instead. These proxy measures help guide us, but they are not the same thing as performance. They only measure performance on a single dimension.

How to hit your numbers:

There are three ways you can hit your proxy target:

Option 1: Distort the data

This is simple. Take the measure that you want to smash and change the measurement system so it makes you look good. Perhaps you could…

Report waiting time to first touch (not completion)

Stop the clock, restart a job if you can’t complete it, then report the shortest time (not the total)

Option 2: Distort the system

This is a little more difficult, it involves changing the purpose of the system so that the focus is on meeting the proxy measure, rather than the real aim. Here are a couple of examples that have hit the headlines:

GPs offered cash to refer fewer people to hospitals. This was done to reduce waiting times — a proxy for health care

Accident and Emergency staff diverted away from seriously ill patients. By treating the less unwell who hadn’t “breached” a four-hour limit, managers could ensure they hit their service level target — another proxy for health care

Option 3: Improve your performance

This is the tricky one, it involves making sure you:

Plus a lot more. Improving performance is hard work.

Proxies and performance are not the same thing.

Only one way of hitting the proxy number actually improves performance, it is a tough job and it isn’t guaranteed to work. Distorting the system or the data is much easier.

Proxy or performance?

Which is more important where you work? Improving performance, or hitting the proxy?

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Image by henry…