The joke
Two robots, one dashboard and a score that won't go up. They've reached the answer managers reach, by the same route: try something and watch the number.
The irony
Swap the robots for a leadership team and it's an ordinary Tuesday. People get reduced to a percentage, and then the percentage gets managed instead of the people. The robots are only doing what we taught them: move the metric. Nobody at the dashboard has asked a human what's actually wrong.
So what?
Our papers keep a person at the top of every capability for a reason. Software can move a number, but people keep the deciding, including what the number was for in the first place. Manage anything by a single score and the score gets gamed; the flagship's answer is to measure what happens next and check the product yourself. A satisfaction score is a clue, not the answer.
What number does your organisation use to tell itself people are fine? Tell us in the comments, or respond to the paper.
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