Curiosidade do dia

Há tempos numa empresa deparei com um indicador sobre "Número de acidentes" que tinha como meta zero acidentes. No entanto, a empresa ano após ano não cumpre essa meta. Propus uma meta mais realista que possa motivar os responsáveis. A resposta fez-me lembrar algo que Peter Drucker escreveu. Sei que há um livro onde Drucker discute a importância de definir objectivos claros e mensuráveis para organizações sem fins lucrativos. Ele dá o exemplo de instituições cujo objectivo é "acabar com a fome" ou "eliminar uma doença", e explica que essas metas são demasiado amplas e inatingíveis no curto prazo. Em vez disso, ele sugere que as organizações devem definir objectivos mais concretos e realistas, como "reduzir a taxa de desnutrição infantil em determinada região em X% dentro de Y anos" ou "aumentar a cobertura vacinal contra uma determinada doença em Z%".

Já procurei esses trechos nos livros "Managing the Non-profit Organization" e "Management - Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", ainda não os encontrei, mas ainda não desisti.

Entretanto, ontem Roger Martin publicou "Management Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices & Playing to Win" onde escreveu:

"When I started reading it, something felt wrong. It sounded too politically correct and modern. Though I had an aging memory of it, having read it over 30 years earlier, it wasn’t what I remembered. Then I realized — and should have before diving in — that I was reading a revised edition, published in 2008, three years after Drucker’s death.

So, I tracked down a 1st edition, published in 1973, and started over again. Unlike the revision I had started to read, the original is flat-out brilliant, packed full of absolute wisdom across its 800+ pages. On utility, it is an A+!

Based on this experience, I issue this heartfelt request: Please don’t, after my death, revise, modernize and ‘improve’ my work. I don’t want someone deciding what I meant to say and saying it ‘better.’ No, no, no. Please."

A minha versão de "Management - Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices" é a de 1973. Por isso, o trecho que se segue ainda não foi expurgado:

"When Efficiency Is a Sin 

Efficiency and cost control, however much they are being preached, are not really considered virtues in the budget-based institution. The importance of a budget-based institution is measured essentially by the size of its budget and the size of its staff. To achieve results with a smaller budget or a smaller staff is, therefore, not performance. It might actually endanger the institution. Not to spend the budget to the hilt will only convince the budget maker—whether legislature or the budget committee of a company-that the budget for the next fiscal period can safely be cut.

Thirty or forty years ago it was considered characteristic of Russian planning, and one of its major weaknesses, that Soviet managers, toward the end of the plan period, engaged in a frantic effort to spend all the money allocated to them, which usually resulted in total waste. Today the disease has become universal as budget-based institutions have become dominant everywhere. End-of-year pressure on the executive of a budget-based institution certainly accounts for a good deal of the waste in the American defense effort. And "buying-in," that is, getting approval for a new program or project by grossly underestimating its total cost, is also built into the budget-based institution."

Como não recordar: Curiosidade do dia e Curiosidade do dia.