The Instrument Is Rarely Blamed

Every generation of management produces an instrument for turning intention into action, and every generation watches its instrument harden into ritual. Management by objectives was meant to replace supervision with purpose, and in a great many organisations it became an annual form. The balanced scorecard was meant to rescue strategy from the tyranny of the financial quarter, and it became a dashboard in four colours. Objectives and Key Results arrived as the corrective to both, and stands accused, in its turn, of being a quarterly exercise in writing down what a team was going to do anyway.What is curious is not the decay, which is ordinary. It is the post-mortem, which never varies. When an instrument fails, we conclude that the organisation implemented it badly: the leaders were not committed, the culture was not ready, the people did not buy in. The instrument walks away from every accident without a scratch. This is a comfortable arrangement for the instrument and for those who…