The objectivity Delusion by K. Ramkumar
It is sad that humans have such poor faith in their own species ability to exercise Judgment. For it is our ability to reason and judge that makes us humans and not animals. Yet we chose to ignore and reject the 10,000 years of human progress solely achieved on the platform of subjectivity viz. human judgment and we are eulogizing and chasing after the Orwellian objectivity. The tyranny of objectivity is that there is only one logic or reason, the one which is authorized as rational by the interpreters of numbers, rules, laws of state or codified knowledge of the day, religious texts or other oligarical institutions or an illusory rational person. The notion of irrefutable truth is the very core of totalitarianism.
We have over the last fifteen years, in this country chased a mirage called absolute objectivity when it comes to assessing or rating human performance. Influenced by the practices and the endorsements from US and Europe we set upon changing our human performance assessment systems from descriptive and trait based systems to what we believed were objective measures based systems. Little did we realize that, fifteen years hence, the very proponents of these practices will bite the dust in their own countries, unable to secure their economies and institutions, with performance assessment systems both organizational and individual, which are reliable indicators of quality of performance. It is not my case to state that descriptive and trait based systems are superior to goals and measures based systems. However my case is that no system, where a human is the instrument of assessing/judging performance can ever be objective.
We very often blindly adopt endorsements and recommendations of academics and consulting firms without ever applying our own experience and judgment to it. The search for an absolutely objective human assessment system is one such eternal search for the Shangri-La. Embedded in the words subjectivity and objectivity is the indication to the true meaning of what is possible. Where a flesh and blood subject is the instrument judging performance of any kind human or otherwise, it can be nothing but subjective. True objectivity is possible only when the instrument of measurement is inanimate viz. lifeless and emotionless. This is where the confusion between assessment/rating and measurement arises. A thermometer measures and a human assesses. If a human tries to use her hand to figure out whether somebody has fever or not it is possible to assess that. It is also possible to assess whether it is a high grade or a low grade fever. The moment we start believing that the human hand is gifted with the same characteristic of a thermometer and hence by training or otherwise a human hand can measure in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius the fever, we have already moved to a delusory state. Years of mindless propaganda and conditioning by the HR Gurus and the all knowing consultants have firmly instilled this delusion in the minds of both the assesses and the assessors and thereby killing the credibility of assessment systems of human performance in organizations.
I have also noted with amusement, the neo converts to this thought viz. those who until yesterday did not practice a decent metrics based rating system, suddenly become the zealous proponent and a guardian of the same, without even having experienced personally the various challenges involved in the same. We should come to terms that assessing human performance is more like making strategic judgment about the direction in which one would want to take a business. All the data and analysis which is required to be done prior to making the call is inevitable. But it is naïve to believe that visionary CEOs reach decisions where data and analysis lead them to. In other words data and analysis takes one closer to the choices. Nevertheless the choice would have to be a human judgment. Thus data and analysis help the judge to narrow substantially the zone of subjectivity. A system which runs purely on human judgment will be substantially inconsistent and the range of error will be large. The moment we support this human system with data, information and analysis, we help the human who is called upon to make the judgment to reduce the choices to one or two performance levels. Hence in what we call as an objective system there still can be errors to the extent of one level of performance or the other. In a process capability terms what we endeavor to do in a system where data, information and analysis is used to support human judgment, is to reduce the standard deviation of the distribution.
Over the years I have also observed with considerable amusement the belief among even senior managers that numbers mean objectivity. Arising out of this is the misconception that having metrics leads to objectivity. Nothing can be far from true, since all of us know that the choice of metrics and the integrity in compiling & reporting it is one of the serious weaknesses in the commercial world. All that one has to do is to sit through some of our business reviews to understand the subterfuge and the use of metrics to explain non- achievement, instead of using it for pin pointing what went wrong and who is accountable. The height of this fallacy was evident in the UN discussion in 2001 on whether to attack Iraq or not on the WMD debate. The much revered and celebrated Ex chief of US armed forces and the then incumbent Secretary of State used satellite generated photographs ( normally considered as water tight evidence of objectivity – even better than numbers and metrics) to get the UN vote for the famous war on terror. In the words of the McNamara (one of the best and the brightest of his era), the legendary Secretary of state to JFK during the Vietnam war, the objectivity delusion was at its height, when after a field visit to Vietnam he selected and fitted the data & information into the frame which supported the continuation of the war and was blind to the ones which screamed at him that US was indeed losing the war.
Unfortunately today organizations have reached a stage where the KRAs and the Goal sheets have become a coercive and restrictive contract between the boss and the team member. The supervisors have sadly lost the ability to get their teams to work on anything which is not specified in the KRA / Goal sheet, leading to a situation where metric is turning out to be a performance constraining and restricting tool. It has reached a comical situation that employees believe that it is better not serve a customer than do anything which is not specified in the KRA/Goal sheet as a metric. The fear of trying out something and spoiling the performance against the agreed metrics is paralyzing many an organization. Metric mania is freezing people with the fear of failure In other cases it is forcing people to adopt unethical or irrational risk taking to meet the numbers. This obsession has reduced many an otherwise competent leader to nothing more than a contract enforcer. My case is not that metrics are bad or KRAs have to be abandoned. On the other hand I am arguing the case for right and limited reliance on metrics and restoring back to managers and the leaders the right to use intuition and judgment in defining results and achievements. This will liberate enterprise and entrepreneurship back to commerce, which has become a slave of mindless and unimaginative Junior management avocation of managing by metrics.
There is another misconception that more the metrics and finer the weight age we give for various goals we make a system more objective. For a moment we should imagine ourselves to be a driver of a car. Now assume that instead of the four dials on the instrument panel we have let us say twelve and say instead of the four main controls namely accelerator, brake, gear and the steering we have twelve, I want my readers to come to the conclusion whether the driver can drive the car at all. Hence my case is that the critical performance factors either human or systemic, are the ones which need metrics. I happened to see the Saturn Five Rocket namely Apollo 11 which took astronauts to the moon and brought them back safely. I was pleasantly surprised to see that on the rocket control panel, there were just five instrument dials giving information to the astronauts. I had the opportunity to interact with an astronaut at the Kennedy Space Centre. I posed him a query, on what happens to all the other information which is required for a Space Odyssey. His reply was that it is the job of the mission control at the Houston and Cape Canaveral to collect and monitor the same. Then he took me to the mission control room at Kennedy Space Centre and pointed out that no system controller had more than four to five data to track and act. He further stated that the boss of the Space Odyssey namely the mission controller at all points of time required only mission critical information, so that he can relay back to the astronauts mission critical instructions. The moral of the experience is that no human being however capable she is will be able to comprehend process and use more than four or five critical inputs. Hence to load KRAs and performance goal sheets with metrics galore will lead to confusion and loss of focus in performance delivery. Metrics mania is a killer of performance, while apparently giving the boss an illusion of being in control.
Yet another delusion on objectivity is that the more refined a rating scale is viz. the performance rating levels, the rater can be more objective. All I want my readers to try out is to go to an electronics shop and try to evaluate a television you want to buy, amongst let us say ten brands on a rating scale of say ten and try the same with a rating scale of four or five. Here we have to understand we are rating a lifeless product hence objectivity is granted on one side. Now imagine the difficulty, when the assessor and assessee are both subjects viz. humans. It is fairly well established in rating human performance the more the choice on the rating scale the poorer the reliability and validity of ratings. In a multi-level rating scale, the raters make 60% of the rating levels on the scale redundant by not choosing the same. 80-90% of the rated population is fitted into 40% of the rating levels made available to them, thereby reducing lets say a 10 point rating scale to a 4 point rating scale.
In summary the human race has to come to terms that any assessment or rating process in which they are assessors or the assessed, will be subjective. However, a prudent use of metrics, data, analysis and rating definitions will support the assessor to reduce the range of choice and thereby the zone of subjectivity to one or two probable choices. This process substantially enhances the objectivity, but will still leave the assessment as a judgment and not a measurement. In our obsession with objectivity, we should not indignify the humans in this process viz. the assessor and the assessee by reducing them to lifeless and emotionless objects of objectivity.
Extremely well written and I hope more Human resource professionals have a more “human” approach when dealing with people.
Dhanesh
A good approach to PMS. However whether ICICI bank has any systems to elude this subjectivity in assessment
The article really makes a persuasive case. I just have one more point to add: Part versus whole thinking. When one is evaluating a person one evaluates a ‘whole’ person. This causes another unintended consequence. Because of this, one evaluates a person and then uses ‘metrics’ to justify the ‘wholistic’ decision. This happens both for performing and non-performing assessee. In the first case, one underplays the metrics, in the other one overplays. However, in both situations, metrics are ‘blamed’. Performance system therefore is termed as ‘biased and subjective’. Very purpose of ‘objective system’ is paradoxically questioned !
@Dhanesh Gupte
A very well written article on a sensitive HR subject. It’s time we stop aping the western management practices blindly.
Excellent article Mr. Ram,
It’s interesting to read views from senior professional like yourself on various facets of HR. Hope to read more from you in future too.
Dear Fellow Professionals,
Further to your discussion at the Thought Leadership Blog, NHRDN brings another opportunity to connect, learn and interact with Mr. K. Ramkumar at upcoming Virtual Learning session at 3-4pm on March 11.
In this webinar the HR Thought Leader, K. Ramkumar, Executive Director and Member on Board at ICICI Bank will demystify OD and share his perspective on how organizations can leverage OD interventions for sustained success.
More details are about the session are available at http://bit.ly/a7VYz0
Regards,
Ankur
Firstly my regards to Mr. Ramkumar.
The main issue highlighted by him in this article is really thought provoking as we all are so engrossed in objective measurements as if we are taking a dip stick measurement of an oil tank and then announcing that this human is having this much juice left. Highly unfair.
I have seen a low performer turning into a high performer in a span of one year only. It was possible only after giving him a perfect milieu matching to his job and faith entrusted on him by superiors. Emotions shown at right time and in a right manner can turn stones into hearts and can change the world.
I agree with Mr. Ramkumar when he says that its our intution and experience which assesses the humans. As HR professionals we all are in the business of people (Humans) and they are no stone but gifted to us as a pure heart. Need to be tender and sensitive in assessing them.
Many thanks to Mr. Ramkumar for provoking me to think in this direction and for giving air to my beliefs.
Thanks once again.
Ritul Pathak
Nice article, Ramkumar!
Any views on the strengths based philosophy?
Very thought provoking views on PMS.
Thanks Mr. Ram for sharing the toughts
Suresh
excellent and stimulating thought process ,well said ,yes indeed an element of subjectivity will be present in any human evaluation further as rightly put forth since its the judgement that is critical in human species thus it is crucial that constant efforts inputs are invested to ensure that there is an element of maturity in making such crucial evaluative judgements,so that organisation benefits with those judgements and we do not miss out the potentials who can grow the buisness and loose out our performers who run the buisness ultimately thats the objective that needs to be fulfilled ,i believe and thus all evalution products with continous trial test should evovle to fulfill the same .
Dear Shri Ramkumarji,
Congratulations on having written a brilliant article bringing out the fallacies of excessive ‘Obejectivisation’ of human efforts.I personally feel the overall emphasis should be on the outcome rather than the output when we actually test any evaluative system.However as many have submitted the process is in a state of evolution and we can only hope for the best.
Regards,
Sidhartha
I want to reiterate that if you read the piece I am not arguing for subjectivity or objectivity. I am merely stating that the disciples have in trying to imitate the objectivity seer put off the fire of judment and intuition for the fear that it will singe them. My attempt is to put up the case of the true import of subjectivity and use objectivity and subjectivity as conjoint faculties to further exploration and innovation. You will see that I have argued against pure subjectivity also. Since it is a well accepted position I have devoted more time to challenge the pure objectivity delusion. I hope my examples make it clear that there is a difference between measurables and assessables and one shld not confuse the two. To me Intuition is judgment guided by unpatterned analysis that is not ammenable to modeling. Thus it has a solid part of data and info but shaped and embelished by the power to fill the unknown/gap and make a judgment call. Those who fear this live their lives as interpreters of data and info and those who can venture into this move on to become entrerenuers and institution builders. Pure objectivity obscures opportunities and threats, it shows things as they are and never as they can be.
If we know your destination our destiny is half known! If we know our KPIs , our performance is half known!
Presented in an impressive manner, but I think it is one sided. I feel that from a scientific point of view the arguments seem to be difficult to agree with. “Objectivity” and “Subjectivity” is major issue not only in HRD, but also in cognitive psychology, in philosophy of science and perhaps in all human sciences. Hundreds of books have debated this issue from various points of view. The current discussion is a good contribution for HR professionals to debate about this issue from HR point of view.
My personal learning here is that the debates about Objective Vs Subjective are very useful as an intellectual exercise, but it is largely irrelevant for practice. The fact is that no experts, not even the space scientists have ever claimed any measurement as purely objective. Philosophers of science have reiterated that whatever we “humans” measure are all subject to our human capabilities and therefore cannot be “objective” or error free in real sense. We try to overcome this by discovering tools that can reduce human errors. Such tools, even the thermometer is never 100% error free and is affected by human errors and other errors. What scientists and professionals have been trying is to reduce the error to make these measures more reliable and objective.
We also know that some items (e.g., gender) can only be “measured” in “nominal scale” whereas others can be measured in interval scale and even ratio scale. We know that temperature does not have a true zero, but height has! Human traits are perhaps more like temperature! Likert who invented five point scales which we use for our performance appraisal system has never claimed that it is an “objective” scale. But that was the only way to capture judgements of many people and quantify them. We all compare people and performances in our mind. Quantification methods such as KPIs help us to translate our judgements into numbers that can be reported, compared and analysed. These systems are also help to report “intuitions” and “gut feelings”. Whether we like it or not, assessments, tests, ranking and such methods of performance differentiation starts from our childhood and it will continue in future.
Yes many top executives base their judgements on “gut feeling” and intuition and many of them succeed and many fail. However, availability of data helps to prevent some disasters! I still prefer to check the weather forecast data while travelling to Europe rather than going by my gut feelings. As a student of management and as a consultant, I have noticed that organisations driven by KPIs, BSCs and such other tools are much healthier in many ways than some of the organisations managed without such tools! Chaos,nepotism, manipulation of performance and biased performance ratings are rampant in organisations which are not having such “objective” systems. Such problems are still there is organisations which have implemented objective systems, but to a much lesser extent.
I believe that if we know your destination our destiny is half known! If we know our KPIs , our performance is half known! The real power of these tools is actually not that they are objective, but that they help to reduce errors! The real power of these tools is also in their ability to communicate performance expectations in a structured manner. Therefore debate about objectivity and subjectivity is largely irrelevant for practice. The real debate should be about “reducing the error and increasing the communication power” of these tools! Any way do we have any other better alternatives?!
Thanks
Sethu
Ram,
A provocative thought - surely we ought not to get overboard with Objectives and Objectivity but nevertheless they serve as good direction compasses!Importantly, it underscores the need for courageous conversations that will add value and meaning to an Individual
Enjoyed the piece. Thank you, sridhar
Dear Ram,
it is indeed heartwarming to see your incisive intellect has sharpened, but that your human understanding has deepened with time !
the underlying theme of your excellently articulted viewpoint that i resonate strongly with is the humility reuired to balance multiplicities like metrics and judgement; self and system; person and performance; al in a more inclusive wholistic and “meaningful” way to lead “people”. Challenging our own beliefs, acquired from “western” gurus, following the herd or whatever is the key as you so well say it to ” not indignify the humans in this process viz. the assessor and the assessee by reducing them to lifeless and emotionless objects of objectivity.”
lets do a dialogue to take this further
warmest regards
Ram. This is an interesting subject. I’d point out a few more dimensions than what colleagues, including yourselves have commented so well.
Conditions. Often the conditions prevailing have a big play in success or failure, and we have to make a conscious effort to adjust for conditions. Metrics is one thing. Very often, metrics set at the beginning of a year are broad guesswork of what the playing conditions may turn out to be. Playing conditions change during the year, and measuring against the goals set beginning of the year then make little sense. An easy example is one of a fund manager who fails to deliver to the goals stated in the beginning of the year because equity markets underperformed in general. There may be more complex business examples. Talking of conditions, the rising tide syndrome too works positively over planned, and we need to adjust for that. Managers/ assessess need to make a conscious effort to adjust for this. An easy example is what we experienced in our insurance business this year, where just by the lift of markets from 13000 to 17000 has given us a revenue of Rs. 330 cr this year over last year.
But before we rush to adjust for conditions we have to think deeper. Where things go more complex, like assessing the performance of a business, we have to make an effort to benchmark ourselves to competition’s performance, and not just to our targets, and use it actively in our assessment process. That throws up how objectively we assess competition. In fact its not just about objectivity, competition often gives information/ take positioning as convenient to communicate to investors, and they too could be brushing things under the carpet, or taking a different approach based on their worldview, or based on the stage of their organisation. Yet an honest effort has to be made to assess our performance vis a vis competition, adjusting for these variables, to get a sense of how weve done, or how were doing. I would like to make special emphasis that we have to get this assessment as right as possible, and not getting this right may threaten the existence of the business itself. Citi for long in 2000 kept reporting to their senior management that indian private sector players had no clue of consumer fianancing, kept understating our performance and numbers to their bosses and themselves, and sooner than later they got wiped out from the scene on many of these businesses. How HR plays a role here is something to think about.
All this, yet, is metric speak. We also have to get away from metric speak and assess the performance on how well you played under the changed circumstances. That makes it subjective. And we have to agree that we are naturally biased when we assess our own performance on subjective matters (on how we played under the conditions, our rewards are linked to the assessment). I don’t have a good idea on how to address this compromise, but we have to work this out in the larger interest of the existence of the organisation or the business.
But competition alone is no benchmark though. Imaging being in the pager industry in 1995. The pager industry was booming, and maybe KPIs across us and competition was set at 100 pc growth. Saying we underperformed as all industry underperformed is useless, as the industry or the service or the technology itself got wiped out. Conditions may accorded its due, but to be caught flat footed when conditions changed is very much a management responsibility. Whether we structured the asset liability, or machinery, or positioning, or cost structures (flexible/ fixed) of an organisaton to suit a possible changed scenario is the responsibility of the prior management. To blame conditions is fine, but how well we set ourselves up is as much the responsibility of the management. If the pitch conditions are different in the morning, say it affords more spin than anticipated before the series, to be left with little options in spinners in the team, is as much a management responsibility. Then blaming conditions is not correct, and we should acknowledge it and factor for it when assessing. Metric speak can never address these matters.
Then there are some basic conceptual issues with scoring models in general. People whove seen cards from the beginning know this. Its called the incremental value of the variable, iv. The common mistake about scoring in general is that the same item gets dual credit without the scorers knowledge. While processing an application form for a credit card, we ask information like. Living in Mumbai since. Age. No of years of bank account. For a person above 40, working in a corporate in a senior management position in Mumbai for 20 years, he gets credit 10/10 for all these questions. But the statiscical model tells us that by being in a corporate for 20 years, and having bank account more than 3 years, the customer is getting credit again and again. For this reason the scorecard calculates through some iterative logic the incremental value of the variable, and tracks say 5 or 6 fields, and ignores the rest, to truly discriminate one customer from the other. How well we think about this incremental value when setting multiple dimensions in our scorecard is something to think about.
Finally there is the irrational mind. When we match gunas when comparing horoscopes, and it shows 75% match, the people concerned tend to believe they have a Godly match made in the stars. Just as much as often times people are able to relate very well to Bejan Daruwala or Sunitha Menon’s prediction for the week or day, and say yes she said it right. Because they begin to believe it works. (though it can be rationally argued that it is impossible to get all capricons to get the same fate in a week.). In some ways our belief in our assessment process in an interview follows the same rationalising, both parties believe it is a good fit because the horoscope is matched. It helps in performance in a way. But a true test of whether we are happy with a particular team is whether we would hire the person again now, without getting engaged with the trappings of the past association. Just as you might want to think if youd marry your partner again if you had the choice. Its tuffer in personal life
but easier in a corporate world. Not that easy though, but a once a year check, even after giving some credit for trappings, may help. Irrationality wont go away, but we can adjust for it.
I am really overwhelemed by the interset shown by my colleagues and the quality of the perspectives. I believe that a blog has to encourage other bloggers to come up with their perspectives and add value to the over all understanding of the subject. I feel enriched by the diverse nature of the vies and the multiple points of view while exploring this theme. This is my first attempt at writing a blog. I should thank Ankur for goading me and keeping the pressure on me to write this out. I want to acknowledge here the immense gratitude i have for all the friends who have helped me enrich my perspectives through their contributions.
am really overwhelemed by the interset shown by my colleagues and the quality of the perspectives. I believe that a blog has to encourage other bloggers to come up with their perspectives and add value to the over all understanding of the subject. I feel enriched by the diverse nature of the vies and the multiple points of view while exploring this theme. This is my first attempt at writing a blog. I should thank Ankur for goading me and keeping the pressure on me to write this out. I want to acknowledge here the immense gratitude i have for all the friends who have helped me enrich my perspectives through their contributions.
Sir, Thanks a million for sharing this extremely thought provoking perspective.
We’re immensely delighted to read from you and are glad that you’ve accepted our request to share your learning’s with other members of the HR fraternity at the NHRD Network.
Look forward to your continued support and guidance.
Best Regards,
Ankur
Since Vaidyanathan had asked me to psot his comments sent to me by e mail i had psoted it and then wrongly followed up my comment under his name. Hence when i corrected it there are 2 similar messages. I thought i should clarify this.
Thanks for sharing this.
A sorely needed viewpoint, all the more credible because it comes from a senior level professional in the industry.
Another key point we need to consider during assessments is the context - because no two humans get to experience the same context while delivering on their objectives.
Regards