It goes “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” How does that work in practice?
In: Other
Here’s a very real example from when I managed a McDonalds.
The staff are scored on how quickly they serve food.
An order comes in, and is displayed on a monitor. The food is made, then pushed out to the front counter. once the order leaves the kitchen they “clear” the order, removing it from the monitor.
Should work just fine.
—
In practice the first person looks at the screen, quickly memorizes what’s on it, and then clears the order. Then they start preparing the food.
The time creeps up a bit as more orders come in and the staff don’t immediately clear them. They do get in trouble for screwed up orders after all. They might get the order started by laying out wrappers, and putting special request tickets down to help them “remember” the order before clearing it. But the order is getting cleared long before it’s actually finished.
—
So the order time is no longer a valid measure of the performance of the crew. It’s the goal, and no longer measures the time to make the food.
I’d get a lot of push back from general managers because my times where “high” as I worked hard to keep the crew on my shifts from clearing the order early, but I pointed out my were honest and useful. And we rarely had huge crisis in the kitchen from botched orders etc.
Latest Answers