Are You Shadowboxing with Data? Are you measuring "good numbers" rather than "good performance"?
I love this phrase (shadowboxing with data) and its definition. It fits so appropriately with what happens too often in our contact centers. We think performance is perfectly reflected in the metrics when it is not. The issue? We have incredibly talented individuals working for us that will meet the targets in very creative ways if we emphasize the metric / target rather than the performance of how to get there (and the identification of barriers to get there).
Read the excerpt below. What do you do in your contact center to keep performance and measurement aligned?
"In shadowboxing with data, individuals who know what sorts of measured outputs are desired (by themselves or their organization) may modify their practice so as to produce "good numbers" rather than what we consider to be "good performance." But because the numbers are assumed to stand for performance, a performance improvement practitioner may miss the process and consider everything to be operating as expected when, in fact, improvements may not only be possible but important to the well-being of individuals and the organization.
You might ask how producing good numbers might vary from producing good performance. There are lots of examples in contemporary society. One is high-stakes testing in schools, where teachers' jobs might be threatened if students do not pass tests with administratively defined score thresholds. This situation can quite reasonably result in the use of instructional methods designed to increase the likelihood of students' reaching those scores despite limited support from parents and very limited instructional resources and time - that is, teaching to the test. In this example, we see teachers taking the limited support and resources they are provided and producing what appears to be evidence of useful learning. Metaphorically, they project this evidence (the test scores) on a sort of screen that obscures or produces an abstraction or a shadow of what they are really doing. Because we do not see the details of what teachers or students are actually doing, we interpret the shadow or numbers to mean what we assume test scores are supposed to mean (evidence of valued learning) and we react (or shadowbox) with the numbers in a way that reifies what we want to believe rather than what might actually exist, missing an opportunity for performance improvement in the process."
From:
Winiecki, D.. (2009). SHADOWBOXING WITH DATA: A FRAMEWORK FOR INFORMING THE CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES. Performance Improvement, 48(2), 31-37.
Read the excerpt below. What do you do in your contact center to keep performance and measurement aligned?
"In shadowboxing with data, individuals who know what sorts of measured outputs are desired (by themselves or their organization) may modify their practice so as to produce "good numbers" rather than what we consider to be "good performance." But because the numbers are assumed to stand for performance, a performance improvement practitioner may miss the process and consider everything to be operating as expected when, in fact, improvements may not only be possible but important to the well-being of individuals and the organization.
You might ask how producing good numbers might vary from producing good performance. There are lots of examples in contemporary society. One is high-stakes testing in schools, where teachers' jobs might be threatened if students do not pass tests with administratively defined score thresholds. This situation can quite reasonably result in the use of instructional methods designed to increase the likelihood of students' reaching those scores despite limited support from parents and very limited instructional resources and time - that is, teaching to the test. In this example, we see teachers taking the limited support and resources they are provided and producing what appears to be evidence of useful learning. Metaphorically, they project this evidence (the test scores) on a sort of screen that obscures or produces an abstraction or a shadow of what they are really doing. Because we do not see the details of what teachers or students are actually doing, we interpret the shadow or numbers to mean what we assume test scores are supposed to mean (evidence of valued learning) and we react (or shadowbox) with the numbers in a way that reifies what we want to believe rather than what might actually exist, missing an opportunity for performance improvement in the process."
From:
Winiecki, D.. (2009). SHADOWBOXING WITH DATA: A FRAMEWORK FOR INFORMING THE CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES. Performance Improvement, 48(2), 31-37.
Tags: measurement, performance, shadowboxing
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bill Haeffner on -
I saw this happen many times in my career. Typically there were "adjustments" to either the the numbers that were calculated (That was a weather related outage so don't count the calls during that time) or the calculation was altered to be more advantageous (add abandoned calls to calls answered in 30 seconds then calculate service level). Everyone had a reason for why they changed the parameters of the reported metric, but in the end it was always to make them personally feel their job was more secure.
Typically their was less job security a small amount of "fudging" created a lack of trust in that individual manager plus if caused a ripple effect to everyone that had missed noticing it before being discoverd months later.
Accountability is a critical part of performance management in an organization. Unfortunately all too often the measurements do not directly indicate how the customer feels about the service and all too often the individual that is held responsible has very little ability to impact the results. The common example of this is when an organization is holding a manager accountable for service level, but will not fund the appropriate level of staff. In many cases no matter how effective the management team is they can not make up for a lack of a person on the phones.
Desperation is created when people are threatened with their ability to feed the family. All too often we drive our employees to "shadowbox with data" as a survival response for holding them accountable for something they don't have the ability to change.
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