Back when I was in the army we were inspected regularly, especially at one big Annual General Inspection. An officer would not only look at things like how neatly the soldier dressed but he might ask questions. The most important question was, “What is your mission?” If a soldier got that one wrong his commander was in trouble; it was the commander’s job to make sure that his people knew such things. (In fact the soldier was also in trouble since his commander would know who couldn’t answer.)
That was a good start to the problem of confusion of means and ends. If every member of an organization knows what the goals are, they are more likely to contribute to reaching those goals. However it takes more than just an occasional question to create that awareness and an understanding of its importance. In fact the army training in general failed to emphasize the mission. The officers paid a lot of attention to ceremony, spit and polish, how we rolled our socks in our footlockers etc. We usually could have passed the visual part of the inspection and answered the questions, but few if any soldiers really gave much thought to the mission. In fact I was tempted to say that our mission was standing inspections.
How do we solve the problem of confusion of means and ends? Awareness is the first step; we must keep our goals in mind and think about how our actions relate to those goals. This should be in our minds whenever we make a decision or take some action. . However that is only a start. People have to make wise decisions that put the goals first, before such things as their individual status. It is the people making the decisions and taking action that determine how effectively we advance toward our goals.
How do we get those people to decide and act wisely? One obvious measure is to push decisions down to the lowest level feasible in any organization. If people close to the issue are empowered to decide, they will usually make better decisions than someone way up in the hierarchy. In a chain of stores, local managers should be able to decide on how much of which products to keep on hand. Yes, some will make mistakes but almost certainly not as many mistakes as if someone remote from the area makes those decisions. It is the local employees who know that people in one town prefer grits while in another oatmeal will sell well.
This extends to families as well. Parents may think their little ones look just darling in certain clothes. However those clothes are likely to collect dust in the closet if the children hate them. The goal should be responsible children, not fashion statements. Of course parents can and should place limits on their children, for example not allowing their daughters to dress like whores. However children should have reasonable discretion according to their maturity, they know what they like to wear better than their parents do.
This decision-making power should be attached to responsibility of course. The local store manager is responsible for profits and if he what he buys sits on the shelf he may find himself demoted to a position where his mistakes don’t cost so much. Children should not be given unlimited clothing budgets but should know that they have only so much to spend. If they blow it all on the latest fads, they will not have money to buy the new fad that comes along next month. They will be out of style and will quickly learn the benefits of buying things of lasting value.
This is one reason to devolve government responsibility to the smallest jurisdictions feasible. The local town council or county commission is likely to know how much they need to spend on police, jails, road maintenance etc. Edicts from Washington, D.C. are likely to overfund some areas while leaving other needs starved for money. One example was the federal effort a few years ago to fund more local police. It was well-intended but the objective was not more police. The objective was to keep criminals off the street. More police were only a means to that end. Many jurisdictions already had a “revolving door” problem with their jails; they had to release criminals for lack of space. More police simply spun those revolving doors faster.
In government, business, family and personal life we have to keep the goal in mind. Every manager or parent should make sure that people understand the goal and why their own actions are important to that goal. If some activity does not help reach the goal, it should be re-evaluated. Each employee or family member should also be assertive in asking why his work is important. It is up to each one of us to know what to do and how that contributes to the overall goals of the organization.
As our actions move us toward our goals instead of simply concentrating on means, our lives, our businesses, and our government will improve.
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Showing posts with label methods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label methods. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Confusion of Means and Ends
In his book, The Peter Principle, Laurence J. Peter describes sending in his application for a teaching job. The application was returned with a note that policy had changed. In order to ensure receipt of applications, they had to be sent by registered mail. Someone was paying attention to the means but ignoring the fact that the end had already been achieved – his application was safely received.
As strange as that event seems, less obvious examples of confusion of means and ends abound in our society. I once worked in a company that set out to get the benefits of “just in time” manufacturing. In fact the company even sent many of us to training courses on the subject.
The idea was to use components very soon after they were produced. If a flaw crept into the production process it would be detected quickly and corrected before it produced a lot of bad parts. In fact the trainers told us quite explicitly that the purpose was not to avoid large amounts of inventory but to improve quality. Clearly that was a good idea in many situations. Just as clearly, it was an idea that required thought in its application. Keeping inventory low was not an end in itself; it was a means to an end.
Sadly many company managers confused the means with the end. In fact they hired a consultant who went through and found “excess” inventory, then uncritically recommended that it be thrown away. Among the inventory discarded was the stock of a specialized transistor no longer manufactured. The result was expensive. The company received an unexpected order and had to take scarce design engineers from other projects to do an emergency redesign. Had decision-makers kept in mind the purpose of a low inventory they would almost certainly not have created that problem.
Sports teams can also fall victim to this confusion of means and ends. Such things as tackles for loss in football and three point baskets in basketball make for good statistics and can help win games. However when they become ends in themselves they divert attention from other aspects of the game. In the effort to get tackles for loss a football team may provide opportunity for long gains. It only takes a couple of long touchdowns to change the outcome of a game. A basketball team may get lots of three-point plays, but that may cost them the higher percentage shots from the two-point range. In either case, the coach and team may concentrate so much on statistics that they forget that their objective is to win the game. How often do we hear that a team won every statistical battle except the final score?
In personal life, a shopper may unthinkingly pursue bargains to the point of ignoring other aspects of his or her purchases. Driving 40 miles to save a couple of dollars will cost more than just paying more closer to home. Likewise buying something on sale that you would not buy at the full price does not save money, it costs. Finding the lower price is a means to the end of saving money; it is not an end in itself.
This confusion of means and ends affects all aspects of human life, from personal and family life right up through the federal government. However as organizations get larger the problem becomes more severe. Large organizations are necessarily bureaucratic and bureaucracies pay attention to processes. They cannot function without lots of rules so it is no surprise that many employees come to regard those rules as the purpose of their jobs. However the rules are means, not ends in themselves.
The clerk in a government office or large company may regard filling out paperwork as the objective. In most cases that clerk or even the department manager has no idea of the purpose of that paperwork. In fact should the reason for the paperwork change it is quite unlikely that the required paperwork will change with it. That is one reason large organizations become so hide-bound and unable to react to conditions. And of course the larger the organization, the worse this problem becomes.
With that it is no surprise that the organization with probably the worst case of confusion of means and ends is the largest organization we have, namely the federal government. It is so large that there is no way to run it except through rules and procedures that end up being one size fits all “solutions.” One of the most amusing examples (if you weren’t the victim) happened with the Y2K problem, the scare that computers wouldn’t work after the year 2000. The Securities and Exchange Commission rightly worried about how brokerage computers would handle dates after that time.
That needed attention so in July of 1999, “The Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule requiring brokerages to cease business and transfer customer accounts to other firms if they haven't adequately addressed year 2000 computer problems by Nov. 15.” What that meant in practice was that the brokerages had to show that they had computers that would handle dates beyond 2000.
For most brokerages that was a reasonable rule but there was an exception. One small brokerage had been quite successful operating with no computer at all. Their pencils, papers, and calculators had no Y2K problem, and would not have had trouble with any year beyond that. The simple and logical reaction from the SEC would have been to just say, “OK, your system will work beyond 1999 so you are approved.” Did they do that? Of course not, they insisted that the brokerage show them how their computers would work. Eventually the brokerage had to buy a computer to comply with the rule. I suspect they sold it later, after the worry went away.
I could probably multiply examples endlessly, I’ve only scratched the surface here. However the above should suffice to demonstrate the problem.
Next time I’ll discuss some ways to avoid confusing means and ends.
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
As strange as that event seems, less obvious examples of confusion of means and ends abound in our society. I once worked in a company that set out to get the benefits of “just in time” manufacturing. In fact the company even sent many of us to training courses on the subject.
The idea was to use components very soon after they were produced. If a flaw crept into the production process it would be detected quickly and corrected before it produced a lot of bad parts. In fact the trainers told us quite explicitly that the purpose was not to avoid large amounts of inventory but to improve quality. Clearly that was a good idea in many situations. Just as clearly, it was an idea that required thought in its application. Keeping inventory low was not an end in itself; it was a means to an end.
Sadly many company managers confused the means with the end. In fact they hired a consultant who went through and found “excess” inventory, then uncritically recommended that it be thrown away. Among the inventory discarded was the stock of a specialized transistor no longer manufactured. The result was expensive. The company received an unexpected order and had to take scarce design engineers from other projects to do an emergency redesign. Had decision-makers kept in mind the purpose of a low inventory they would almost certainly not have created that problem.
Sports teams can also fall victim to this confusion of means and ends. Such things as tackles for loss in football and three point baskets in basketball make for good statistics and can help win games. However when they become ends in themselves they divert attention from other aspects of the game. In the effort to get tackles for loss a football team may provide opportunity for long gains. It only takes a couple of long touchdowns to change the outcome of a game. A basketball team may get lots of three-point plays, but that may cost them the higher percentage shots from the two-point range. In either case, the coach and team may concentrate so much on statistics that they forget that their objective is to win the game. How often do we hear that a team won every statistical battle except the final score?
In personal life, a shopper may unthinkingly pursue bargains to the point of ignoring other aspects of his or her purchases. Driving 40 miles to save a couple of dollars will cost more than just paying more closer to home. Likewise buying something on sale that you would not buy at the full price does not save money, it costs. Finding the lower price is a means to the end of saving money; it is not an end in itself.
This confusion of means and ends affects all aspects of human life, from personal and family life right up through the federal government. However as organizations get larger the problem becomes more severe. Large organizations are necessarily bureaucratic and bureaucracies pay attention to processes. They cannot function without lots of rules so it is no surprise that many employees come to regard those rules as the purpose of their jobs. However the rules are means, not ends in themselves.
The clerk in a government office or large company may regard filling out paperwork as the objective. In most cases that clerk or even the department manager has no idea of the purpose of that paperwork. In fact should the reason for the paperwork change it is quite unlikely that the required paperwork will change with it. That is one reason large organizations become so hide-bound and unable to react to conditions. And of course the larger the organization, the worse this problem becomes.
With that it is no surprise that the organization with probably the worst case of confusion of means and ends is the largest organization we have, namely the federal government. It is so large that there is no way to run it except through rules and procedures that end up being one size fits all “solutions.” One of the most amusing examples (if you weren’t the victim) happened with the Y2K problem, the scare that computers wouldn’t work after the year 2000. The Securities and Exchange Commission rightly worried about how brokerage computers would handle dates after that time.
That needed attention so in July of 1999, “The Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule requiring brokerages to cease business and transfer customer accounts to other firms if they haven't adequately addressed year 2000 computer problems by Nov. 15.” What that meant in practice was that the brokerages had to show that they had computers that would handle dates beyond 2000.
For most brokerages that was a reasonable rule but there was an exception. One small brokerage had been quite successful operating with no computer at all. Their pencils, papers, and calculators had no Y2K problem, and would not have had trouble with any year beyond that. The simple and logical reaction from the SEC would have been to just say, “OK, your system will work beyond 1999 so you are approved.” Did they do that? Of course not, they insisted that the brokerage show them how their computers would work. Eventually the brokerage had to buy a computer to comply with the rule. I suspect they sold it later, after the worry went away.
I could probably multiply examples endlessly, I’ve only scratched the surface here. However the above should suffice to demonstrate the problem.
Next time I’ll discuss some ways to avoid confusing means and ends.
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
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