Metadata
- Author: Drucker Institute
- Full Title:: Measurement Myopia
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://drucker.institute/thedx/measurement-myopia/
- Read date:: 2025-01-13
Highlights
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This maxim ranks high on the list of quotations attributed to Peter Drucker. There’s just one problem: He never actually said it. (View Highlight)
Drucker’s take on measurement was quite nuanced. Yes, he certainly did believe that measuring results and performance is crucial to an organization’s effectiveness. “Work implies not only that somebody is supposed to do the job, but also accountability, a deadline and, finally, the measurement of results —that is, feedback from results on the work and on the planning process itself,” Drucker wrote in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. (View Highlight)
But for all that, Drucker also knew that not everything could be held to this standard. “Your first role … is the personal one,” Drucker told Bob Buford, a consulting client then running a cable TV business, in 1990. “It is the relationship with people, the development of mutual confidence, the identification of people, the creation of a community. This is something only you can do.” Drucker went on: “It cannot be measured or easily defined. But it is not only a key function. It is one only you can perform.” (View Highlight)