soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
You point out the faults and then want to throw away the baby with the bathwater.
I do understand that a metric is just a proxy for a true measure. Some measure cost, some service, etc. When management loses sight of what the metric is supposed to measure, we have a problem. I've said that before and I still agree with this. I won't try and justify poor management. This does not make the metric wrong as you would like to assert.
Send agains are a problem. Drivers should do their best to properly reduce them. A blanket edict from management is not appropriate. Neither is justifying doing nothing by complaining about the metric.
P-Man
The problem is not the metric. The problem is fear.
The manager who fears for his job cannot focus on making good business decisions because he is too focused on making the good metrics that will keep him from getting fired.
The problem only gets worse when Atlanta decrees that a particular metric will become the new "flavor of the week". Everything that we have done up to that time in order to generate the old metric goes out the window when we suddenly have to shift our focus to the new one.
For instance, this months flavor is Stops Per Car. There is an arbitrary number that we as a center must generate, whether it makes any sense to do so or not. The lengths that we will go to in order to produce that metric are beyond absurd.
As an example, I was on TAW last week for a minor injury. I was sent out in a package car to shuttle some misloads between two drivers in different loops. I was fully cleared to drive as long as I did not handle a packge over 5 lbs. Due to a variety of communication and traffic issues, I was unable to meet with these drivers in a timely manner.
But I had a DIAD, and the packages in question were under my weight limit. So I messaged in and asked if I could just go ahead and deliver them myself. I did this from the parking lot of one of the businesses that the misloads were addressed to.
I was told no. I was instructed to bring the packages back and sheet them as missed....because if I delivered them I would show up on a report as an additional route, which would drag the center's Stops per Car metric down. In other words....generating the metric was more important than servicing the customer.
There is no rational basis for such a decision. I was on TAW and making the same amount of money whether I delivered anything or not. And it would be foolish for me to assume that such institutionalized stupidity is unique to my center alone.
P-man---you guys have a serious fear problem which is forcing your people to make a lot of stupid decisions in order to placate the bean-counters in Atlanta. That fear problem is pretty much the underlying cause of every other issue we face as a company. Fix your fear problem, and the rest will fall into place.