AGILE IN ACTION

I can't operate effectively without some kind of goal. Let me clarify that. Without some kind of goal I am directionless. I'm easily distracted from any focus I might have started with by other things that crop up. I end up flitting from one thing to another, multitasking. I become anxious and frustrated. I lose my sense of priority. I end up working on things that don't add value and I create lots of work-in-progress. It only gets worse the longer I go without being able to check in against some goal. I suspect most people are like this.

Without numerical measures we wouldn't know what to do. The problem is, when numerical measures are used as targets they cause people to think their sole purpose is to achieve them, usually to the detriment of everything else. When managers own the targets and use them to force performance they bring out the wrong behaviors. People cut corners to meet the targets. And targets are everywhere. We blinker ourselves to everything except our targets and forget about the real needs of users. In pursuit of our targets we make local optimizations that are suboptimal for the throughput of the whole system, the wider organization.