Management by imagination

Roger Martin is the author of the book entitled: “The Design of Business.” ¹He has a very interesting observation and I want to share it with you.

Martin says: “The perception that good management is closely linked to good measurement runs deep. How often do you hear these old saws repeated: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”; “If you can’t measure it, it won’t happen”? We like these sayings because they’re comforting. The act of measurement provides security; if we know enough about something to measure it we almost certainly have some control over it.

But however comforting it can be to stick with what we can measure, we run the risk of expunging something really important. What’s more, we won’t see what we’re missing because we don’t know what it is that we don’t know. By sticking simply to what we can measure, we come to imagine a small and constrained world in which we are prisoners of a “reality” that is, in fact, an edifice we’ve unknowingly constructed around ourselves.

I have always been asked this question. “Francis, with the heavy investment we are putting in this training program of yours, how do we measure the effectivity of it?”

As a consultant, I get this all the time.

Those who know me, though, know I do not make empty promises. Deep in my mind I would like to ask the person back, “If you spent your entire lifetime teaching your kids, tell me, what key performance index have you used in order to measure results?”

The next thing that would float in my mind would be: “Are measured grades in school a serious and accurate measure of intelligence and creativity?”

Martin continues saying: “The late 19th and early 20th century American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was the first to point out that no new idea in the world was ever produced by inductive or deductive logic.

Analyzing the past, crunching the existing numbers to produce the future can do nothing more than extrapolate the future from the past. So if you stick to measuring what you can already measure, you cannot create a future that is different than the past. For that to work out at all well for any institution making its decisions on that extrapolation, the future needs to be remarkably similar to the past — or bad things start to happen. If an institution is all geared up for a future that is like the past and the future changes radically, then the institution becomes an anachronism.

Managers in this situation tend to blame forces beyond their control: “How could we have ever predicted such a change?” In some sense, they are absolutely right. They had no way at all of predicting change. Their core conception — “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count” — precludes them from demonstrating to themselves that the future will be anything but an extrapolation of the past.

Note, however, that it is a prison they have built for themselves. They build it, lock themselves in a cell, throw away the key, and then complain about being unfairly locked in a prison cell.

Martin proposes a new wisdom: “If you can’t imagine it, you will never create it.” The future is about imagination, not measurement. To imagine a future, one has to look beyond the measurable variables, beyond what can be proven with past data.

The difference in the world of “if you can’t measure it...” executives is like day and night. For the abduction logician, the world is expansive and the possibilities are endless. For the measurement types, the world is a brutal place, full of nasty surprises that are impossible to predict. That is why any expression that starts with “if you can’t measure it” is dangerous for your managerial health.

Great stuff from Roger Martin.

Think design. Think innovation. We are created by a great creator and He has endowed us with the ability to be creative. And this is why every time you appreciate a day that fulfills you, it happens to be the most inspiring one.

Perhaps you have just synced in with your creator. Now, how do you measure that?

(Start the New Year right with Francis Kong. Sign up to update and upgrade your leadership and life skills with his highly acclaimed “Level Up Leadership” workshop seminar January 13-14 at EDSA Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries contact Inspire at 09158055910 or call 632-6310912 or 6310660 for details.)

1 The Design of Business. Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Press, 2009). His website is: www.rogerlmartin.com