Scorecards and Metrics Killing Employee Engagement: Perhaps

This is an interesting debate – should corporations create guidelines and values instead of absolute rules and measures? “Doing what’s right for the customer” is a value that can drive appropriate action, but is it a value that is instilled with Balanced Scorecard?

Are Scorecards and Metrics Killing Employee Engagement? – Adrian C. Ott – Harvard Business Review Adrian C. Ott is a corporate advisor and speaker on customer strategy and innovation and the author of The 24-Hour Customer: New Rules for Winning in a Time-Starved, Always-Connected Economy. Follow her on Twitter at @ExponentialEdge. 9:23 AM Tuesday July 12, 2011 by Adrian C. Ott | Comments () Staff Sgts.

“Clearly rules are important but just as important is the ability to use judgment and common sense. Unfortunately, judgment and common sense are less easy to authorize.” — John Todor

“	Too many rules can kill employee engagement. http://fb.me/JVnMq2kJ
	hcscando July 13, 2011

“To me, this is about company size and culture, not the “evil” employees following rules that make no sense. Zappos would have handled this differently. Add too many layers between customer and employee and this is what happens.” — Phil Simon

“	Is it time to throw out your employee metrics? http://bit.ly/rm8vck #HR #metrics #scorecards
	MattSims20 July 13, 2011

“Good performance metrics motivate employees to help the organization (or their department or their workgroup) achieve strategic objectives that align with the organization’s overall objectives. There are certainly poorly formed metrics out there and perhaps Delta is guilty of such an infraction. But in this example, it doesn’t seem that performance metrics are to blame.” — Wayne Eckerson

“	An incident between U.S. soldiers and Delta employees serves as an example of how rules disable employee judgment
	Human Capital Strategies July 13, 2011

“In Lead By Greatness (to be published in September) I dedicate a section on how to use metrics to MEASURE and not to DRIVE behavior, how to measure human output rather than input and how to make sure that metrics don’t instill fear into people and paralysis into companies.” — David Lapin

This was a compelling commentary by Diane from NewBrainForBusiness.com. Here comments…

There are several things we know about how human brains work that impact this – it’s not just bad judgment on the part of executive management. When our “fear mechanism” is triggered (e.g., someone makes a noticable mistake and we want to be sure it never happens again)our “old brain” takes charge and …

1. We want to solve problems NOW. We want the solution to be SIMPLE. Rules appear to simplify things and provide a permanent solution. We feel like we’ve really done something about the problem. Metrics work in the same way, focusing us, simplifying our understanding of what actually happened. Simple is good for the part of our old brain in search of safety.
2. We blame others – then, we don’t have to do anything differently. Employee “engagement” is an artificial concept that drives us to imagine we can control employee behavior. When it doesn’t work out, we’ve done the right thing and it’s someone else’s fault. In order to engage an employee to be and do his/her best, it takes regularly and frequently interaction.
3. We make up stories about what is happening and believe them. Our tendency toward certainty can lead to bad decisions at all levels. Overused top-down metrics, policies and procedures represent a great example of this.

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