Management by Imagination

The perennial argument between those who need to control stuff and those who are okay with not controlling turns up in this article:

The perception that good management is closely linked to good measurement runs deep. How often do you hear these old saws repeated: "If you can't measure it, it doesn't count"; "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it"; "If you can't measure it, it won't happen"? We like these sayings because they're comforting. The act of measurement provides security; if we know enough about something to measure it we almost certainly have some control over it.

But however comforting it can be to stick with what we can measure, we run the risk of expunging something really important. What's more, we won't see what we're missing because we don't know what it is that we don't know. By sticking simply to what we can measure, we come to imagine a small and constrained world in which we are prisoners of a "reality" that is in fact an edifice we've unknowingly constructed around ourselves.

Written, as you might have guessed, for a business audience. It could easily have been written for a church one. Photo from flickr.com, taken by a photographer who goes by the name of 'The Truth About..' Which might be ironic...!