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Be Careful When Focusing on Numbers

By Daniel Bobinski

We hear it all the time: “If you can measure it, you can manage it.” Unfortunately, a danger exists in focusing only on numbers, as this philosophy ignores the intangibles of human nature. After all, it’s people that make a workplace function.

It seems that society has become obsessed with measuring and managing just about everything. Obviously, good things do come from tracking numbers. We can analyze a salesperson’s closing ratio based on multiple factors and then adjust how we make assignments to that person to get better sales. We can measure trends and patterns in atmospheric conditions and make predictions about the weather that help us when planning events.

But not all decisions based on number-monitoring produce improved results. As just one example, some people believe that merely increasing the number of dollars spent per student in education will result in improved student learning outcomes. All we need to do is compare U.S. Census data information on per-pupil spending by state with K-12 educational performance and we see this is not true. Many factors impact student success, such as teacher engagement, parental encouragement and even schoolyard bullies. Some factors help, others hurt, but the point is that many intangible human factors that don’t get measured affect student achievement.

Similarly, many hospital administrators look at numbers like “door-to-doc,” the time it takes for someone to get checked into an emergency room until the time they see a doctor. They also look at patient satisfaction scores. More than one emergency department doctor has described the Catch-22 that comes with this, stating that they must sometimes cut short the time they spend with a patient so that they can improve door-to-doc time. They say the ripple-effect of that can result in lower patient satisfaction scores because patients don’t think their doctors have spent enough time with them.

Another problem is that not every patient responds to customer satisfaction surveys.

We know the presence or absence of certain factors impacts productivity, effectiveness, and profitability, and by all means, we should measure and manage what we can if we know doing so will make a difference. But we also know improved effectiveness and efficiency can be the result of factors beyond that which can be measured.

Looking at the intangibles

Let’s start by considering management skills. The standard answer for helping someone be a better manager is providing him or her more or better management training. Yes, that can help, but what if a manager is hiding an insecurity? Insecurities are intangible, and they reside in every person – some more, some less – but it’s not usually something that gets measured or assigned a number. When insecure people get placed in management positions, bad decisions can be made out of self-protection, and the results can be frustrating for all concerned.

Employee attitude is another intangible. All it takes is one employee with a bad attitude to inject poison into team camaraderie, and that can have a significant impact on productivity or effectiveness. I’ve seen workplace morale nosedive in a matter of months just from one key player bringing a boatload of negativity to work each day.

Manners are another intangible. The use of phrases like “please” and “thank you” are difficult to measure, but their lack of use can lead to sterile, cold workplaces where people do only what’s expected and no more.

The role of emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is also an intangible, although we are getting better at measuring it. Strong emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to perceive and assess one’s own and others’ emotions, desires, and tendencies, and then make the best decision for a win-win result. This includes being able to acknowledge and value feelings in oneself and others and respond in ways that keep the gears of communication moving with minimal impedance. It’s one thing to learn how to do it, it’s another thing to put it into practice and it’s something else to be able to do it well.

Thankfully, emotional intelligence can be learned, and over the last 15 years human resource development specialists have figured out the type of questions to ask to determine one’s knowledge of the core components required to exercise good EQ. Naturally, assessments have been created, and now people can get a general idea about their level of EQ and which areas may still need improvement. However, it should be noted that just because someone has acquired knowledge on a subject, it doesn’t mean the person is putting that knowledge into practice.

In other words, if we trust a set of numbers instead of also looking at intangibles, we run the risk of miscalculating capabilities and thus making inaccurate conclusions about reality.

Still, those possibilities should not stop us from studying EQ, because high emotional intelligence helps make a workplace more effective and efficient. Even if we can’t measure and manage everything, learning EQ can still bring significant workplace improvements.

I’ll close with a quick story. Nearly 20 years ago I was teaching emotional intelligence at a production plant that employed 600 people. Senior management had already gone through the course the previous year, and I was then teaching EQ to a group of middle managers. One day a senior manager came into the training room and stated that their budgeting process is highly accurate, and every month they know exactly where they should be financially. But this year, something was different. They were millions of dollars in the black, ahead of where they thought they’d be, “and the only thing we’re doing differently is teaching this course,” he said.

In essence, the senior manager was crediting the intangibles of EQ with helping the company be immensely more profitable.

Bottom line, too often we look at results and attribute them to incorrect causes because we focus too much on the measurables. Sometimes it is the intangibles of management that can be the biggest factors of all.

Daniel Bobinski, M.Ed. is a best-selling author and a popular speaker at conferences and retreats. For more than 30 years he’s been working with teams and individuals (1:1 coaching) to help them achieve excellence. He was also teaching Emotional Intelligence since before it was a thing. Reach him on his office phone at 208-375-7606 or through his website at www.MyWorkplaceExcellence.com.

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