Assessing to Learn & Learning to Assess
SoL Research Initiative
First Research Workshop
January 14-16, 1998
Bill O'Brien's "nine frustrations" as a CEO
1. Fog in seeing real business performance
- very difficult to tell how a business is doing in less than 5-10 years
- inherent ebbs and tides in business performance
2. We don't understand gestation periods
- difficult to judge the effectiveness of basic innovations in culture, processes, and capabilities.
3. War between the short term and the long term
- pressures to make short-term results look good are pernicious given that companies are, basically, there "own scorekeepers"
- people on the front lines know when "disinvestment" is occurring, but this can be covered up for many years.
4. Is the problem lack of knowledge or lack of virtue?
5. Self score keeping: Is it more temptation than management can handle?
6. How do we embed "leanness" as a basic virtue, starting at the top?
- temptation to get "fat" in good times which leads to the large scale lay-offs.
- "I worry about companies that can lay off one thousand people but not one person."
7. Much damage done trying to quantify that which shouldn't be quantified
- we often use proxies when we are too lazy to developan understanding of the context for people's actions.
8. Much improvement possible by simply avoiding dumb things that everyone says you must do.
- e.g., fads
9. Is it possible, through measurement devices, to develop a "legacy mentality" in corporations?
- core dilemma driving large organizations today: the desire of those at the top to "put their stamp" on the organization compared to inherently long time delays in significant change
- if few significant changes can be realized in 5 years, efforts of the current CEO to make change occur "on my watch" can be counterproductive