Bullseye!

Targets can seriously damage your health - Simon Caulkin in the Obsever

My views on targets are well known. So I am pleased to share this. It covers a variety of sectors, and sadly no mention of environment, but I think the picture it paints is clear.

I love this quote: 'The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers with simple problems are those with simple minds. Problems that arise in organisations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a simple part.'

And this: 'What do "targets" accomplish? Nothing. Wrong: their accomplishment is negative.'

This, too, both quote and comment: 'Management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do'. This is what makes it so attractive to bad managers. Unfortunately, in absolving them from the effort of thought, it is also junk management, which has the same effect on the consumer as junk food: obesity, flatulence, discontent and demoralisation. - [As Junkk Male of Junkk.com, I am proud of the attitude demanded by that extra 'k'].

Gosh, I must just go on quoting: Lack of method explains why the public sector absorbs so much resource for so little return. It also explains the stop-go, curiously disembodied experience of engaging with it: it's not reacting directly to you, the individual citizen, but to management's abstraction of you, as embodied in the target. Hence the obsession with 'choice', which simply transfers the question of method to you.

Sound like most enviro 'initiatives' and they vast comms budgets to get 'us' to compensate for institutional failings? Think ActONCo2 or the latest food waste weeping tomato ad assault. All, I am sure, with a nice bonus for the guys at the top if the money spent (from whom?) gets enough of us to say we are more 'aware' to tick a box in some self-justifying research.

Where could this money have been better spent on actual things that can be DONE and which can make a tangible difference NOW?

I hope this guy turns his sights on other areas soon. This situation must be outed, understood... and changed.

ADDENDUM - I have been moved to write to encourage him to do so:

Thank you for writing this. I hope it resonates.

I am simply appalled at what the culture of targets, especially in complement with the proliferation of what seems to be unaccountable quangos with mysterious ROIs (financial and enviROI), is reducing this country to. Seeing to do is now much more important than doing. And this has not escaped the attention of all protagonists when it comes to forging careers and generating income.

ADDENDUM 2 - I have noticed it is guys like this who are polite enough to reply (mind you, I am usually agreeing with them!):

'Many thanks for your generosity! Much appreciated — and very encouraging.'