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OE Tools - How To
     Understanding LEAN
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Process Modeling
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OE Strategy
     Rubberband Effect
     Facilitating Process Mapping
     Metrics Drive Gaming
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     Process Driven
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Are our metrics DRIVING process gaming?

When I get carpet shock, I am often reminded of my summer as an intern at a major automotive company. One Friday afternoon, the line testing station kept finding "out of spec" assembled alternators. As a result, the plant was going to miss its' production numbers for the week. To avoid missing his numbers, the Plant Manger had the bad alternators shipped as good parts to a Truck Manufacturer. A few weeks later, a bunch of interns were sent out to the Truck Manufacturer's lot to put good alternators in the assembled trucks. When you are an intern changing the alternators on a truck in the outdoors, you can't help but get shocked every so often. This was the first of many times in my career where I observed that the strict adherence to a metric drove the wrong behavior.

Nowadays, with the Six Sigma driven emphasis on "You got to measure it, if you want to drive performance", this playing with metrics has reached new heights. Now that doesn't mean that we should stop this emphasis on metrics. NO WAY! What we need to do, though, is make sure to develop "counter-measures" for every critical metric. A counter-measure is a metric that is partnered with a critical metric to minimize gaming of the system.

To come up with a counter-measure, we first think through what can go wrong when people game the system to make their numbers. Then we determine a metric for that. For example, if you run a drive through fast food restaurant, your critical metric might be speed of completing an order for drive through customers. Some of the risks you run, when people game the system, is that the speed of completing an order for sit-in customers increases, or that the workers are in such a hurry, they mess up the orders. In this case, a couple of counter-measures that make sense would be speed of completing an order for sit-in customers, and accuracy of orders going out. This way, as long as the speed of completing an order for drive through customers improves, while the counter-measures don't become worse, you should be in good shape. And as a result, you won't shock your customers when they open their bag to eat their food.