What runs the world?

It's not my job I hate, it's just some of the complete fuckwits that work there. I love my team, I truly do. It's taken them time to get used to my style, but we get the job done, never let anyone down and always deliver on expectations. The added bonus is we do it with good grace and good humour.

Of course we now have to live in this fucked up age whereby everything is measured. Everything is or has a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) or worse still, as some fuckwits call them Key KPI's and yes...you're right that'd be Key Key Performance Indicators then. I wonder what the upper limit is on Keys for KPI's?

Anyway I digress...my life is run by KPI's. My team operate to KPI's, we're measured on KPI's, we collate data and publish KPI's , we measure KPI's we amend KPI's, challenge KPI's, produce trends of KPI's and basically kneel at the feet of the Great God Kay-Pee-Aye. Wherever we look in the news, we're bombarded with information and data based on KPI's, KPI's from the government, KPI's from QUANGO's, KPI's from the NHS and about the NHS, KPI's about Schools and for all I know there's even KPI's for those who work in MacDonalds.

Today, a report my team publishes was released. Every month we take the data, feed it into complex programs or Excel and produce results which show how our Operations bit of High Tech Pipes, Tubes, Strings and Rays are performing. We measure the KPI's on Finance, Processes, Customer Value and interestingly enough, Growth and Development...see posts passim for my views on "Development". Anyway, the report shows all this stuff for January, which was a huge pile of fresh dog turd in terms of systems failures. We had tons of Very Bad Things (VBT's) happens...around 15 during the month as opposed to the average of around 2 or 3. We also had
a high number of Pretty Bad Things (PBT's) happen as well, which aren't as bad as VBT's but still need to be on peoples "radars". Fuck me, how I'd love to superglue some radars on peoples heads for real! I'd also love to give them a ball each and see how long they can walk around with it until they drop it.

Anyway, despite this piss poor performance, in turns caused by a heady mixture of shitty "asset sweated" equipment, underfunded software failing and, of course, the inevitable "foot, gun, aim, shoot" Jesse James Engineer culture of changing things whilst wearing a stetson, boots with spurs and shouting "Yee Hah", the KPI's came out as Green. Yep, Green. Just like grass. Vert as the French would say. This is because we use a RAG status system to depict how KPI's look. Red is BAD, Amber is BAD, Green is Good. Of course BillyBoy , the Head of Operations isn't happy about this as January was such a pile of puke he's been arse kicked from pillar to post by that mysterious community known as "the business" and so he doesn't want to go to them saying how well we've done..and how things are Green, ergo things are Good.

Whilst I understand this, the fact remains...he agreed and in some cases help design the KPI's and the measurements that make them! So, like all Senior Managers, he's happy to take credit when things are Green and Good, and happy to accept the results from his agreed measurements, but when they're Red and Bad...well...you've guessed it...the measurements are wrong, and the messenger (me and my team) have obviously fucked up...Shoot the Messenger!
His email suggested exactly this, so for once I remained calm (ish) and decided to hold my reply. Despite the fact that The Master, my boss is now involved and is doing his best impression of a sandal wearing social worker in "trying to understand" the issues, I've decided to reply to Billyboy stating exactly that...

He made the rules
We merely abide by them
The way we calculate has not changed for months
He was always happy before
If he wants stuff changed he goes through the proper Governance process
He's paid a fucking barrow load of money, so he should go to the business, put some exercise books down his trousers, tell them January was shit, explain why our KPI's show Green, and then come back and work with us to find an appropriate measurement.

I may have worded the last point more ...ahem...diplomatically.

I might also suggest we do away with "facts and figures" and publish on "instinct, gut feel and perception" with added "tell them what they want to hear" as well

Later, Grocerjack.