Indicators for ministers at the risk of the illusion of control

Thanks to the indicators put in place by the government (The world Dated January 4, 2008), the citizen will finally soon know what our political staff are worth, or at least their actions. Using a battery of indicators, the performance of each minister will be measured publicly. The Minister of Culture will, for example, be deemed on the evolution of the frequentation of museums that have become free or the evolution of hacking audio and video files on the Internet. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, for his part, will be judged on the number of French ministers present in European councils, etc. It is a private consultant cabinet that designed the indicators, thus conferring on them no doubt greater legitimacy (note incidentally that the design poverty of the indicators selected questions about the proper use of public funds).

The intention is clear, it is a question of importing the methods of the private sector into the public sphere, just as is already done in other countries. Besides, the reactions of citizens, read in the press or heard on the radio, testify to their approval for this type of approach. Approval all the stronger as they already know them in their companies or organizations (administrations, hospitals, associations, etc.). This apparent consensus, around performance and efficiency, however masks the essentials.

The development of a real “ managerialization »Of society, which we have been witnessing for a few years with the Lolfthe entry of performance measurement methods in all spheres including non -market, leave teachers and researchers in management a bit perplexed. These control and piloting techniques, which we teach in universities management sectors, are well known. But when we teach them, we highlight both the advantages and the disadvantages. Indeed, these techniques include many limits on which it is advisable to question before pulled them by simple mimicry.

In this, the fascination of the public sector and now political for private methods has something unhealthy. The perverse effects of a simple display strategy, or worse of a poor understanding of these managerial techniques then falling under incompetence, can be formidable. They have never prevented companies from being poorly managed, or even disappearing. Note in passing that, unlike a widespread idea, the State and its administrations are already assessed. The evaluation of public policies is an ancient idea and put into practice for years, including by private firms. On the other hand, if a number of attempts at the operation of the operation of the administration ended in failures, it is perhaps because, as suggested in 1920 Henri Fayol, one of the founding fathers of management, things are a bit different in the public domain. Several problems arise.

Setting up indicators to measure an individual’s performance requires that he has a certain degree of control over the results to be obtained. However, many of our actions obey contingencies that escape us. It is all the more true that the action does not take place between the closed walls of an organization. Our president knows this well, the evolution of delinquency depends just as much on the amount of insurance franchises or even technical progress (which still steals autoradios ?) What police work. The question that arises is then what degree of controllable the ministers will have on the subject of these indicators. Ms. Albanel is really able to control the market share of French films in France ?

Then you have to take into account the time. We do not get the results in a miracle, overnight. Companies know these major projects well where costs drop 10% in three months, before going up in the suite. Bluff and communication go hand in hand. The important thing for project managers is to quickly get a promotion before Boomerang’s return. A policy requires time to make its effects permanently. Is it serious to think that Madame Pécresse can be held responsible for chess in the first year of license, she who has just arrived last June ? On the other hand, thanks to the indicators, it is a result quite easy to obtain: let the students pass and the problem will not be felt until four years later when they arrive in the master.

An indicator will objectify the performance of each other ? Great naivety. An indicator does not say the true and the false. You have to make it speak, interpret it. It is always associated with a reading agreement which conveys hypotheses that are heavy with consequences. Again, that could not escape our president. The police and the gendarmerie had, for example, initially proposed, as part of the Lolfthe same indicator: “ The rate of positive alcohol tests ». But these two institutions drew different conclusions from reading the figures (see the Arthuis report, 2005). The police saw in the increase in this figure a sign of the effectiveness of its action (better targeting of controls) while the gendarmerie interpreted its decrease as the result of its dissuasive presence. Elected officials had to request a clarification and homogenization of interpretations. But such a situation is not unusual. It is even the standard, as shown by the situations of companies that we are led to meet.

The implementation of indicators is not the panacea for performance problems. This is one of the possible solutions but it should be handled with care. Who says it ? Peter Drucker, the inventor, in the 1960s, of management by objectives. But as often in the matter, we forget the conditions for the implementation to better go headlong towards all the clichés dictated by a pretended pragmatic behavior. Management also has its fundamentalists, their adventurous behavior sometimes has heavy consequences as shown by the errors made by Western companies in the 1970s and 1980s, and which led them to lose part of their competitiveness in the face of Japanese companies due to management by figures. What are these famous conditions ? Being able to have the least ambiguous objectives possible and ensure that these objectives are well linked to strategies (or policies, in the public domain). And again, these objectives will not be usable in the same way depending on whether the organization is able or not to dissect its operating modes. Conditions that it is often difficult, by nature, to meet in the political field or the public sector, one of the objectives of which is to create externalities (that is to say to have benefits on the whole of society) by definition difficult to measure. Peter Drucker thought that in 90% of cases, these conditions were not met.

In fact, the indicators are very useful management instruments provided that they do not give too much importance to them, to preserve a discretionary judgment (which is the essence of the man of action, much more than the indicators) and above all to handle them with caution. If you don’t know your job, they won’t make you better. In some cases, they can help see more clearly in a confused situation, they can also help you understand of your mistakes, but they never quite close the debates on performance. They can especially be used to move forward, not the truth but its own interests. Management researchers sometimes present them as legitimization tools or “ war machines ». Their functions are then very different from the search for objectivity that they are supposed to allow … a bad indicator or a bad figure is thus used for many ends than efficiency.