A Lesson in Performance Metrics

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But there is also a danger here. Lots of executives get so caught up in counting this and analyzing that—often rolling out fancy IT systems to capture a whole host of numbers and other indicators—they forget that any measurement is at best meaningless and at worst counterproductive if it's not done in the service of helping the organization meet its mission.

Implicit in this notion, of course, is that the organization has a clearly articulated mission that it fully embraces—what Drucker described as its "purpose and very reason for being." Many do not.

"Finding the right metric has a lot less to do with technology than it does with the culture of the organization," says strategy consultant Howard Dresner. "The question is: What are the right metrics that will reinforce the right behavior?"

Teachers Teaching Managers

In his book The Performance Management Revolution, Dresner compares the data that most companies generate to what appears on a scoreboard at a sporting event: "It doesn't tell spectators anything about the play action that led to the teams achieving that score. It doesn't provide any information to the coach of the trailing team that would help it catch up and overtake its opponent. It doesn't tell individual players what they can do to play better for the remainder of the game." What's missing is context.

To her credit, Weingarten is envisioning an evaluation process that doesn't lose sight of the big picture. "We propose rigorous reviews by trained expert and peer evaluators and principals, based on professional teaching standards, best practices, and student achievement," she said. "The goal is to lift whole schools and systems: to help promising teachers improve, to enable good teachers to become great, and to identify those teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom at all."

If Weingarten and the teachers' union reach their aims—and given the depth of the challenge and the politics involved, it's far from certain that they can—they will do no less than lift the fortunes of millions and millions of young people. Nothing could be more crucial for the health of society. But there would be a pretty nifty side benefit, as well: By measuring results so skillfully, the teachers would provide a powerful lesson for managers everywhere.

Rick Wartzman is the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

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