A 10 part checklist for understanding when and how to use metrics. The Tyranny of Metrics - De Gruyter And if rewards and punishments are involved, they are more likely to react in a way that skews the measurements validity. . Subscribe to receive 30% off your first order. One predictable effect of the new plan would have been to raise the costs of administration, both by diverting ever more faculty time from teaching and research into filling out forms to accumulate data, and by increasing the number of administrators to gather the forms, analsze the data, and hence supply the raw material for the governments metrics. Information is never free, and often it is expensive in ways that rarely occur to those who demand more of it. Available as There are things that are worth measuring. But what is most easily measured is rarely what is most important, indeed sometimes not important at all. As well see, as the No Child Left Behind Act raised the stakes for schools of the test scores of their pupils, teachers and principals in many cities responded by altering students answers on the test. It means that people are rewarded or penalised for outcomes that are actually independent of their efforts. Menu. All quotes here are from the book itself unless otherwise indicated. This book addresses a major problem. Remember to constantly revisit the spirit of what youre trying to attain, and continuously ask yourself whether the tangible things youre tracking are high-signal proxies for those goals. When numbers, standardised measurement of performance, and big data are seen as the wave of the future, professional judgment based upon experience and talent are seen as retrograde, almost anachronistic. For instance, it may offer decent advice in some areas while being repetitive or unremarkable in others. The typical pattern of dysfunction was formulated in 1975 by two social scientists operating on opposite sides of the Atlantic, in what appears to have been a case of independent discovery. At each subsequent wave people pointed to the unmeasured costs of tying reward to standardised measurement. Measurements are more likely to be meaningful when they are developed from the bottom up, with input from teachers, nurses, and the cop on the beat. Numbers and measurements arent substitutes for personal experience and sound judgment. Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. A key premise of metric fixation concerns the relationship between measurement and improvement. But it cannot be publicly acknowledged, since it represents a threat to the amour propre of other nations. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging gaming the stats or teaching to the test. Thats because what can and does get measured is not always worth measuring, may not be what we really want to know, and may draw effort away from the things we care about. China The Tyranny of Metrics Book Summary - Jerry Muller - Wise Words If what is actually measured is a reasonable proxy for what is intended to be measured, and if it is combined with judgment, then measurement can help practitioners to assess their own performance, both for individuals and for organisations. In the attempt to replace judgments of quality with standardised measurement, some rankings organisations, government institutions, and university administrators have adopted as a standard the number of scholarly publications produced by a college or universitys faculty, and determined the number of these publications using commercial databases that aggregate such information. 5 Solid. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itselfand this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. Complete with a checklist of when and how to use metrics, The Tyranny of Metrics is an essential corrective to a rarely questioned trend that increasingly affects usall. Those are, of course, legitimate considerations: college costs eat up an increasing percentage of familial income or entail the student taking on debt; and making a living is among the most important tasks in life. Primary schools, for example, have their tasks of teaching reading, writing, and numeracy, and these perhaps could be monitored through standardised tests. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves. The Tyranny of Metrics Free Summary by Jerry Z. Muller Join getAbstract to access the summary! He is professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. These trends may not be obvious to personnel who are on short duration tours in country, for example. Jerry Z. Muller The title, The Tyranny of Metrics is not meant to convey the message that metrics are intrinsically tyrannical, but rather that they are frequently used in ways that are dysfunctional and oppressive.. Hot Topic Youll find yourself in the middle of a highly debated issue. When the outcomes are dependent upon more wide-ranging factors (such as patient behaviour outside the doctors office and the hospital), they become more difficult to attribute to the efforts or failures of the medical system. Depending on taste, one could call it a cultural meme an pistme, a discourse, a paradigm, a self-reinforcing rhetorical system, or simply a fashion. The advantage of the competitive market, he maintained, is that it allows individuals not only to make use of their knowledge of local conditions, but to discover new uses for existing resources or imagine new products and services hitherto unknown and unsuspected. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with . Often an instant classic and must-read for everyone. The attempt to substitute precise measurement for informed judgment also limits innovation, which necessarily entails guesswork and risk. Hospital readmissions have indeed declined, a much touted success for performance metrics. Compelling the people in an organisation to focus their efforts on the narrow range of what gets measured leads to a degradation of the experience of work. As one Chicago detective explained, Such problems prece ing Its so easy. First, the responding officer can intentionally misclassify a case or alter the narrative to record a lesser charge. Similarly, many jobs have multiple facets, and measuring only a few aspects creates incentives to neglect the rest. The rationalist believes in the sovereignty of technique in which the only form of authentic knowledge is technical knowledge, for it alone satisfies the standard of certainty that marks real knowledge. Metrics often miss the behavioural goals of schooling. It looks like we don't have any plot for this title yet. To manage the risks of measurement biases, companies . Here's what the ratings mean: 10 Brilliant. Jerry Z. Muller is an author, journalist and professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Movies. Oxford OX2 6JX Case Studies, Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Epigraph, 3 The Origins of Measuring and Paying for Performance, 14 When Transparency Is the Enemy of Performance: Politics, Diplomacy, Intelligence, and Marriage, 15 Unintended but Predictable Negative Consequences, 16 When and How to Use Metrics: A Checklist, Jerry Z. Muller One could draw together the insights of a number of thinkers into this dictum: The calculative is the enemy of the imaginative. The result is a tyranny of metrics that threatens the quality of our lives and most important institutions. Well structured Youll find this to be particularly well organized to support its reception or application. With a new preface by the author. Collecting data, processing it, analysing it all of these take time, and their expense is in the opportunity costs of the time put into them. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itselfand this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. Rewarding individuals for measured performance diminishes the sense of common purpose as well as the social relationships that provide the un-measureable motivation for cooperation and institutional effectiveness. Insiders take Youll have the privilege of learning from someone who knows her or his topic inside-out. They do provide a useful measure of student knowledge of the subjects tested. Sunlight is the best disinfectant has become the credo of the new faith of Wikileakism: the belief that making public the internal deliberations of all organisations and governments will make the world a better place. He is not responsible for the losses so generated." (TNE p31) United States The Tyranny of Metrics : Muller, Jerry Z.: Amazon.com.au: Books So organisations measure what theyve spent, rather than what they produce, or they measure process rather than product. Your highlights will appear here. The Tyranny of Metrics - Jerry Z. Muller - Google Books In academia as elsewhere, that which gets measured gets gamed. The falling rate of reported readmissions was due in part to gaming the system: instead of formally admitting returning patients, hospitals placed them on observation status, under which the patient stays in the hospital for a period of time (up to several days), and is billed for outpatient services rather than an inpatient admission. Metric fixation leads to a diversion of resources away from frontline producers toward managers, administrators, and those who gather and manipulate data. Jerry Muller on the Tyranny of Metrics - Econlib The Tyranny of Metrics Jerry Z. Muller Princeton University Press, Apr 30, 2019 - Business & Economics - 248 pages 1 Review Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content. Kindle Edition. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the . The Tyranny Of Metrics Audiobook - Free Audiobook Summary & Review They could raise the standards for incoming students, increasing their likelihood of graduating-but at the price of access. Always begin by reminding yourself that the fact that some activity is measureable does not make it worth measuring, indeed, the ease of measuring may be inversely proportional to the significance of what is measured. People do want to be rewarded for their performance, both in terms of recognition and remuneration. There is an often unexamined faith that amassing data and sharing it widely within the organisation will result in improvements of some sort-even if much information has to be denuded of nuance and context to turn it into easily transferred data. The Tyranny of metrics is an introspect on the application of metrics, when it is linked to the performance of pay may lead to gaming. Numbers and measurements aren't substitutes for personal experience and sound judgment. And be prepared to go digging, since the negative effects could be well-hidden. To demand or preach mechanical precision, even in principle, in a field incapable of it is to be blind and to mislead others, as the British liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin noted in an essay on political judgment. People also commit gaming through creaming, which means taking easier clients or cases so you have more wins or excluding challenging assignments that might depress your rate of success. Risk-free: no credit card is required. But problems arise when such measures become the criteria used to reward and punish-when metrics become the basis of pay-for-performance or ratings. For convenience, lets call it metric fixation. 7. Performance indicators can certainly aid, but not replace, the key functions of management: thinking ahead, judging, and deciding. Now and Always,The Trusted Content Your Research Requires, Now and Always, The Trusted Content Your Research Requires, Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus. Numerical metrics also give the appearance (if one does not analyse their genesis and relevance too closely) of transparency and objectivity. Kilcullen emphasises, metrics must be adapted to the particularities of the case: standardised metrics drawn from past wars in other venues will simply not work. . Some of the decline in crime in recent decades is a product of private actions by property owners. But if the incentive system rewards speed and volume of output, the result is likely to be a decline in truly significant works. The more the object to be measured resembles inanimate matter, the more likely it is to be measureable: that is why measurement is indispensable in the natural sciences and in engineering. A strange, egalitarian alchemy often assumes that there must be someone better to be found outside the organisation than within it: that no one within the organisation is good enough to ascend, but unknown people from other places might be. getAbstract recommends his practical insights to executives, policy experts and organization leaders trying to escape the metrics trap. The Tyranny of Metrics (Summary) - OverDrive But there is a difference between promotions (and raises) based on a range of qualities, and direct remuneration based on measured quantities of output. What the advocates of greater government accountability metrics overlook is that the very real problem of the increasing costs of college and university education is due in part to the expanding cadres of administrators, many of whom are required in order to comply with government mandates. The Tyranny of Metrics Audiobook, written by Jerry Z. Muller | Audio Thus, for example, graduation rates of high schools and colleges can be increased by lowering the standards for passing. Most jobs have multiple responsibilities and most organisations have multiple goals. Unsupervised Learning Security, Tech, and AI in 10 minutes, Get a weekly breakdown of what's happening in security and tech. Kicullen also warns against the use of all input metrics, that is, metrics that count what the army and its allies are doing, for these may be quite distinct from the outcomes of those actions. How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens our schools, medical care, businesses, and government. That is also why effective politicians must to some degree be two-faced, pursuing more flexibility in closed negotiations than in their public advocacy. Overview Youll get a broad treatment of the subject matter, mentioning all its major aspects. When the public and its politicians think of public safety, they think of the police, who are held responsible for the level of crime. This strategy involves leaving out inconvenient in stances, or classifying cases in a way that makes them disappear from the metrics. There is a better way to evaluate the importance of a paper or the research output of an individual scholar: read it. That assumption leads to a turnover of top leaders, executives, and managers, who arrive at their new posts with limited substantive knowledge of the institutions they are to manage. Improving numbers through omission or distortion of data. "Barbara Kiser, Nature, "To his credit, Muller isnt interested only in documenting the ways in which the metric fixation produces unintended consequences. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Distortions derive from flaws such as calculating metrics only on things that are easy to measure, measuring simple things when your desired outcome is more complex, quantifying inputs rather than outputs, and degrading information quality through standardization. You can cheat by lowering your standards to increase your numbers, and by omitting or manipulating data to get better results. The Tyranny of Metrics|Paperback - Barnes & Noble Our rating helps you sort the titles on your reading list from solid (5) to brilliant (10). There is nothing wrong with rating people on a scale. Directions, Princeton Asia (Beijing) Consulting Co., Ltd. ), All too often, ranking systems are used as a cheap and ineffective method of assessing the productivity of individual scientists. eBook. Directions, 99 Banbury Road We are less likely to take chances, to play with possibilities, and to follow hunches, which may, after all, not pay off.. is particularly well structured. "Tim Harford, Financial Times, "A short and highly readable account of the way such management systems are undermining important institutions, such as universities, schools, policing, charities and even companies. And the same holds true on the national level. But that is a fallacy, or at least a misleading generalisation. It will make you realise just because something can be measured it doesn't make it important as well as how metrics create incentive systems that may have run away side effects. Sometimes, newly introduced performance metrics will have immediate benefits in discovering poorly performing outliers. Improving numbers by lowering standards. And the second is a similar, more simplified version of the same, by Goodhart: Anything that be measured and rewarded will be gamed. But it is not the only task in life, and it is an impoverished conception of college education that regards it purely in terms of its ability to enhance earnings. Edit. getAbstract Summary: Get the key points from this book in 10 minutes. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, weve gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itselfand this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. His books include The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought and Adam Smith in His Time and Ours. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. Managerialism under the spell of metrics tends to ignore, if it does not actually disdain, all that. United States Our very sense of self is possible only because our thoughts and desires are not transparent to others. When performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping ones job, getting a raise, raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people will focus on satisfying those measures-often at the expense of other, more important organisational goals that are not measured. The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller 1,404 ratings, 3.70 average rating, 202 reviews Open Preview The Tyranny of Metrics Quotes Showing 1-19 of 19 "In situations where there are no real feasible solutions to a problem, the gathering and publication of performance data serves as a form of virtue signaling. "Edward Tenner, author of The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do and Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, "In The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Muller has brought to life the many ways in which numerical evaluations result in deleterious performance: in our schools, our universities, our hospitals, our military, and our businesses. At getAbstract, we summarize books* that help people understand the world and make it better.