I am running trough the long floors of the big main building of our global company headquarter. The building where the power, the core competencies and the best knowledge of our business is at home. The building where this great success-story has been lived in the last 15 years. I have come here from my subsidiary office location to meet some people live. And I am now running from one meeting to the next, from one contact to the next and I ask myself: „Why didn’t you do it on the phone? Why didn’t you look more carefully how far the meeting locations are away from each other, and in which building they are? Now I am running…and still can’t be in time.“ The simple excuse: The problem is not the live meetings. The problem is that they postponed it several times and my original setup with enough walking time in-between was destroyed. The better, more relevant answer: I didn’t do it on telephone by intention. Because I wanted to be able to see their faces, when I ask my questions. I wanted to see, if they react with incomprehension, if they are puzzled, embarrassed or rather open and interested.

Was that really necessary? Worth the running around?
50 steps and a minute further down the floor my anger replaces that question with a more valid, more important question: „Why the hell at all do I have to run around between a total of meanwhile 8 different contacts to get answers to a relatively simple question? A question that already the first two contacts, one of them is my own manager, should have been able to answer. Directly, immediately. For the sake of the problem analysis that they gave to me as a task.“
The question is about what damage resulted from the fact that we slightly missed a certain KPI once in the last period. The question was asked because it was said that this caused problems and losses and I am now trying to get more data and some specific cases about this damage. In order to find causes and effective solutions to make sure we won’t do such damage again.
As they were not able to answer that question (that after all, this question tries to capture, what the problem really is, that I shall work on), I had talked to the boss of my manager, which had assured that this was indeed a very important KPI and that we get a lot of trouble if we do not meet it. And he gave me two names that could tell me a lot of stories and cases that would illustrate, why this was so important and how that was doing damage.
He was contact number 3. Meanwhile I am running to talk to contact number 6 and 7 – and number 8, out of my private network, waits for me in the neighbor building, then afterwards. Contact number 4 and 5 had first accepted my meeting requests, then redirected me to contacts No. 6 and 7. Note: They first had accepted and only when the date approached, 3 hours before the time, they had changed their mind and suddenly found out that somebody else would be better to talk to me. Why do I get the impression, that they simply prioritized this down as they saw the meeting time approach? And I thought, I was working on a really important KPI and a really urging problem…?

Oh my dear, why didn’t I do it on phone…? Because it seems to be a delicate, difficult, sensitive question – that’s all I found out so far – besides the fact that my own business (another 7 contacts, however inside our area and in the hierarchy downwards) does not see this KPI as decisive for their business decisions. So I am running to find somebody, who can confirm the statement that this KPI influences decisions and results of my company. There must be somebody who can explain how that goes with the decisions and lost opportunities…and which these were, specifically (also called: facts). Funny enough, contact number 5 is sitting in the very same cubicle as contact number 2 – right in face across the desk. That feels like a strange, embarrassing situation (ask yourself if it was embarrassing for me or for them) and seems to me like a bad omen – and indeed, while I talk to that friendly, experienced and competent man I discover that he can’t answer my question neither. But at least, also he can confirm that the KPI of course is very important for the company and that missing the KPI can create a lot of trouble, effort and damage of this and that kind. However, he can’t give me one single real, fact based case, neither.

But, for heaven’s sake, I thought, can that be true? He can not really tell me what has happened because we missed it once, by some half percents. He and his colleague are working all day to make sure we meet that KPI as a unit and finally, I thought, above all as a whole company– but both can’t give me any concrete, real life case that really has happened as as consequence of missing the KPI. All I get are stories about stories of what absolutely can happen and is a risk. Finally, I am leaving the meeting with his promise to get another contact from him – and off I go running through the long floors to meet contact number 7.
And while I am running and blaming myself for my tight meeting arrangement, the word ‘Kafkaesk’ raises to my mind for the first time. Wasn’t it just like this in Kafka’s novel, ‘The Trial’? Somebody being brought from one official person to the next, walking through long floors, stairs up and down – without understanding the purpose and connection to real life? Or was that rather the typical old experience in government administration offices: ‘No this is not our area of responsibility, please go to room Number 138’ – maybe I am mixing up things. Anyways, both would not be a good way of working for my company.

Contact number 7 listens with interest to my question and background about why I am here, and, remarkably enough, she is the first one who confirms and agrees that my question is important to be answered, considering the type of problem that we want to analyze. In the next minute I discover, why that might be (before, nobody understood why I ask that question, really): Unfortunately she is just a tool-developer for the processes that my question is about – but she does not have insights and expertise about why and how her colleagues are doing their job with this process and the KPI and why really it is so crucial for our company.
Now I am definitively convinced to be in a chapter of Kafka’s novel (wondering:”What did I do why they are doing this to me?”). Why the hell did the contact named by the boss of my manager send me to another contact that can’t even say anything about what I need to know – because she is doing a different job? My question had been well explained, live on phone.

After all, she is very sorry, but can’t really help. But isn’t it remarkable that she is the only one so far who confirms that it is logic to raise my question? What does that mean? Either she is free of bias, unlike the others, and does not need to defend a status quo of an established way of work against all good questions and logic – or we are both ignorants who just do not understand what this is all about. However, if we are really just missing special knowledge – why are 6 other contacts not able or not willing to explain with a real life case what this is all about?

Contact number 8, my private connection who had been doing that kind of job some years ago – gives me a basic lesson of what the whole KPI is about in general (in general!) and why it is important, in general. And what damage and efforts and risks it can generate, in general and in principle, and if we have many of these KPI deviations in many units. His basic lesson teaches me two things:
1) 70% of what he tells me was already understood, despite the fact that I am not a subject matter expert. I had imagined that there must be something complicated, difficult to understand in this area of expertise. But, no, this is quite straight and simple, a bit like I had thought for myself based on what I knew so far. I can think in logic and across several steps of cause and effect, that was all what was needed to understand enough.
2) He is the only one who has a halfway acceptable reason why he is not able to answer my question with facts and real cases about the damage caused: It is years ago that he has been working in the area where these KPI are being controlled and where he was part of the consequent decision and reporting processes. All the other contacts are right now today in the middle of all of that, with responsibility and up to date knowledge of daily business…
3) We have a problem with not one unit such as mine missing the KPI, but with the fact that either a large number of units or some few with much bigger weight than us are missing it at the same time. That was already said by contact number 2 some time ago – however without specifying any details about numbers and units – for reasons of sensitivity and confidentiality, as he said.
4) His ‘lesson’ and general explanations already help me to think a good step better about how, when and why the KPI might be important – or not.
Thus I now wonder why I did not at least get these insights from a not small number of 7 official contacts, before? And why do I get so much incomprehension for this question that none of them even is able to let me get a basic lesson? Probably my way of talking and asking plays a role. Admitted, it certainly does. However, what does it tell us that I must be very very skilled in talking to people and asking my question to get facts and knowledge out of one of 7 contacts? Shouldn’t that be rather quite plain and easy? And that still I only have general explanations and not one single real fact, so far? Considering that not I, but contacts number 1 and 2 said that this was a real problem and important and influencing decision taking and creating losses to our company?

It tells me that either I am really part of a Kafka-like story, where I am guilty of something that nobody can explain to me. Or that we all are simply chasing a ghost, and not a real problem. Or there is a real problem, but they are pointing to it in the wrong direction.
They are very busy and eager to fulfill their task in their little box of defined tasks. Everybody is relying on the next box that this somehow all together makes sense at the end. And that it is effective and efficient. Everybody trusts (=assumes) that the big bosses all up there in the hierarchy – or the big wisdom of management status quo – know the purpose of their tasks. They are showing-off with allures so important and serious and adult. But in reality they are just little wheels that are working fine and who do not have the job to ask for how the whole really works. And now I am the uncomfortably solid grain of sand that disturbs the whole works of wheels with my ‘stupid’ question about the purpose and about facts.

As if I was the problem here – I am astonished, even shocked that they are really quite unaware of the purpose of their own tasks, or at least that they do not see how foggy their stories about the purpose and the needs are. I am astonished and shocked that they are so free of any data and real cases of what has happened because one unit has missed a KPI. I always thought that this kind of blind and data-free task execution would be a black-and-white exaggeration, a management-book-story and fictive showcase. I thought the works of wheels was a drastic metaphor to make people see. A fiction in an old black and white film by Charly Chaplin. I thought I would never find it so well and clearly represented in reality. But here it is, in reality, just as meaningless as in Chaplin’s film. I don’t know what to say any more.

And it even is worse: They are not just blindly executing their tasks. They are even making other people more busy because they define the (one time) failure of not always perfectly executing their tasks as a problem (statisticians call it either ‘not enough data to conclude anything’ or ‘natural variation’). A problem important enough to have priority and to be worked on with many hours of very eager and busy detail ‘data’ analysis work. We are doing this, while we still don’t know if there is any real problem (a case, facts) with the missed KPI. However, what I can now definitely say after my run through the floors and the 8 contacts is, that THIS ignorance of purpose and lack of connection to business reality (= facts) and/or the inability to explain what is meant, is a serious problem and risk for my company. I found evidence as long and high as 8 contacts and hundreds of walking steps and so many precious minutes in meetings.

What a waste of time.

But at least, my health has benefited on that day – because I had to run about 2 kilometers through floors and a total of 8 stories of stairs upwards. Well, if that is fine for my company… so it shall be fine for me. However, maybe next time we do it with a jogging-outfit and somewhere outside in the sun, please? And who takes then care of keeping my company successful and my job safe and all of us prosperous and proud? The task executors in the Kafka-Chaplin house of boxes and wheels are not doing it.