Life Coach - Step 39 of 100 - Output measures and outcome measures

During my 3 year CME tenure I often ran into problems on account of these measures especially with things related to attendance. I ended up writing and meeting the Commandant to explain what I understood.

Analogy
The objective of a polio vaccination drive is to reduce polio cases by administering vaccines to all suitable candidates.
Output measure are

• Number of children vaccinated
• Number of vaccines purchased, number of vaccines administered and number of vaccines returned
• Number of vaccines gone waste due to various reasons
• Number of doctors involved
• Cost of the entire drive

In army we measure how many people are available for PT, for classes, etc. This is an Output measure only. It is only one half of the story. Actually in many cases it is data that I wont even consider.

What I will consider is the Outcome measure
Outcome measure is

• What was the drop in polio cases on account of the vaccine drive

My request to the Commandant was let us use outcome measures for attendance for PT and classes

• As long as I end up in excellent enclosure in PT tests, dont bother me to attend the PT period. I am a morning person and I like to study in the morning and workout in the evening
  
• As long as I have a CGPA above 8.0, let me decide whether or not I should attend classes

If PT tests are conducted every quarter as per rules, then at the most I can misuse the system for a quarter. Because the next time I don't end up in excellent grading, I will have to start attending PT classes.
And as long as I have a CGPA of 8.0, let attending lectures be optional. The term I drop it, I will attend all the classes.

The advantage of this is also that it acts as a motivator for people to excel. They get recognized for their hard work and are willing to work voluntarily.

It did not go well with the Commandant - he was using output measures and not outcome measures.

What measures do you use in your unit?

As a MTO I never bothered what time my clerks came to the office as long as the work was done on time. Output measure would be what time did they get in, what time did they get out of the office. As long as they were available within working hours for coordination with other departments and they had informed the rest of the staff of their timings, I was not too worried.

And guess what, they used to stay overtime, work weekends to finish the work, because for me the outcome mattered. If they wanted to play football in the evening for 2 hours and work at night, it was fine with me. Do what you enjoy but also do what your duty wants, once your enjoyment is done.