Are metrics good or bad? Do emotions belong in professional life or is that unprofessional? What does digitalisation mean for German SMEs? There has been silence on this blog for a few days, because the Brose Technology Days needed my full mental capacity. By late Sunday afternoon, there’s finally food for thought and answers to the three questions. For me at least as exciting as the crime scene on Sunday evening.
Nugget #1 is about Metrics. Jerry Z Muller, author of the book “The Tyranny of Metrics”, shows the negative consequences of metrics. I am torn on this subject. On the one hand, I have often enough observed how metrics generate harmful behavior. It gets particularly bad when the key figures are also linked to compensation. Moreover, the expense of measurement and reporting does not directly contribute to value creation. Such efforts significantly waste bandwidth in some companies. On the other hand, in my opinion, we cannot do without key figures. Entrepreneurial indicators such as turnover, profit and loss are part of the entrepreneurial basics and are even legally binding. But key figures such as the number of new customers, throughput of machines and error rates can also be helpful to increase efficiency and effectiveness. It gets difficult when it comes to innovation. How innovative am I? Where can I improve? Do you have any key figures on the topic of innovation in your company? I am interested in exchange. (5 min, text, English)
Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires
Nugget #2 is a passionate article by Magdalena Rogl in PR Magazin, which she thankfully posted once again on Linkedin. It’s all about emotions. I can still well remember the words of a former colleague: “We don’t want emotions in the workplace. That’s unprofessional.” I was completely perplexed at the time and it immediately triggered resistance in me. There are no machines working here that deliver their emotions to the revolving door in the morning. In preparation for the Technology Days, it has been emotional for me in the team over the last few weeks. At first it always annoyed me. In retrospect, however, I’m happy about that. It shows me that people are there with body and soul. In this sense, celebrate emotions! (8 min, text, german)
As Nugget #3 I have the latest episode of the t3n podcast for you. Josef Brunner shares his thoughts about digitization in Germany. I remember relayr as a supplier of sensors in chocolate bar form. I find the “new” value proposition of insured efficiency gains thanks to the industrial Internet of Things exciting. This should scale much better than the hardware relayr started with. There should be masses of use cases among the thousands of medium-sized German companies in the manufacturing industry. Where would you use relayr in your company? But I find the discussion about business models even more exciting, especially in the automotive industry. Can we manage the transformation from continuous improvement of hardware (a.k.a. German engineering) to services and platform economy? What about your company? How do you help to drive change forward? (50 min, audio, german)
In Germany it is a holiday on Friday and in many places there are also Easter holidays. I wish you a nice 4-day week or a relaxing holiday. We’ll “read” again for treasure 88. You do not want to miss it in any case? Just sign up for the bottle mail.