Dr Tadhg O'Mahony

In today’s world, the challenges and opportunities faced by public and private organisations, both governments and business, have been growing. It was this increase in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, or ‘VUCA’ problems, that led to the emergence of futures studies as a field about 80 years ago. But while future studies has spread somewhat, a reliance on measuring and indicators has typically dominated western management and political cultures in recent decades.

There is an oft heard mantra in management “what gets measured gets managed“, a culture in politics and business suggesting a priority on quantifying through data, and using indicators to understand change. It is important to see this as a management culture, because it suits certain mindsets, disciplines and political interests to simplify problems to measurement. But this assumption can be quite problematic, and even dangerous.

In article on Medium in 2019 Danny Buerkli describes how this mantra is often attributed to management theorist Peter Drucker, but not only did Drucker never say it, Buerkli describes decades of research to show that it is wrong. Buerkli discusses lists of AI applications violating physics and common sense to meet a goal, and the more concerning case of doctors in the UK “being diverted from treating seriously ill patients to ones with minor problems in order to meet 4-hour waiting time targets.” Writing in the British Journal of Pain in 2015, Troye describes how pain cannot be counted, it is personal and needs qualitative research.

From inequality and financial crises to climate and ecological breakdown and from choosing a mortgage to deciding which product to develop, the problems associated with relying on data and indicators are considerable. An article from O’Mahony in 2023 notes, data and indicators can ignore qualitative factors that may be more important, and can obscure uncertainty and risk. The groundbreaking article on sustainable wellbeing, from O’Mahony in 2022, describes how indicators can bury ethical and political issues, favouring some interests over others, and can even import controversial values.

A more apt mantra attributed to Albert Einstein is “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted“. Understanding the limits of the data and indicators we use is critical, as they can grossly oversimplify, leading to choices from bad to catastrophic. Finding ways to support better analysis and better decision making is critical to good management. Joe Ravetz at the University of Manchester describes this as going ‘from smart to wise,’ as we journey down the unknown path of the future in a complex world.