Читать книгу Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World - Noreena Hertz - Страница 20

Another danger of putting the measurable on a pedestal is that what cannot be measured often ends up being discarded, or dismissed. But just because something can’t be quantified, it doesn’t mean that we should ignore what it is telling us.

A conversation with a senior director of a multi-billion-dollar international children’s charity brought this point home to me in a stark way. Huddled in a Cambridge University antechamber, encircled by six of her colleagues, Ms Broun explained that the key problem children now face in many middle-income countries was domestic violence.26 She and her colleagues knew this, because they had personally witnessed countless cases of children bearing marks of physical abuse alongside symptoms of mental strain. They’d heard their stories, seen their scars, and noted their teachers’ and community leaders’ corroborating stories.

Domestic violence, however, is hard to measure. What do you record? The number of bruises? How can you capture in numbers how terrified a child feels? As a result, Ms Broun had been unable to convince the organisation’s head office that domestic violence was something vital for them to target. Instead she was told to focus her efforts on addressing problems for which they could collect numbers, and thereby easily gauge progress on – problems such as under-attendance at school, or children without sufficient vaccinations.

These instructions were given to Ms Broun despite the fact that in middle-income nations, such measurable and easily trackable problems had to a great extent been resolved, whereas domestic violence was active and growing.

In many ways it’s hard to accept this story. It speaks of bureaucratic intransigence and rigidity, and it’s also symptomatic of the way in which the Cult of the Measurable can overshadow what really needs to be seen, and what really needs doing. In this case it is incredibly painful, because the happiness and welfare of children is at stake. If the over-importance of numbers can become embedded in this kind of situation, where in your business or personal life could the Cult of Comfortable Measurement be adversely affecting your decisions?27

By devaluing that which cannot be measured, we risk not only making poorer decisions, but also distorting our priorities and goals. As was once said, ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’28