The Perils of Metrics

Careful, thoughtful, painstaking use of metrics; clear aspirational goals; intrinsically motivated people with no desire to game the system:  all together, a big improvement.

"For five years Charlie took it upon himself to create a new workflow system for the tracing center, breaking down each step in the tracing process into equations, doing time-motion studies for actions as minute as how long on average it takes the ladies to go from their desks to the roll room. Every step was analyzed and rethought, the numbers crunched.

And now? Despite no increase in budget, no new technology, no new staff: `I'm doing twice as many guns, twice as fast, and almost twice as accurately as we did when I got here in 2005.'"

http://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns