Hard and Soft

Halfway through writing this article the news came on the radio that the Health minister Alan Johnson had stated that at Stafford Hospital:

"There was a complete failure of management to address serious problems and monitor performance. This led to a totally unacceptable failure to treat emergency patients safely and with dignity."

The Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said:

"It is unacceptable that the pursuit of targets-not the safety of patients-was repeatedly prioritised ,alongside endless managerial change and a 'closed' culture, which failed to admit and deal with things going wrong."

Here is the article itself...

Promoting and maintaining the health and vigour of organisations requires a combination of 'hard' and 'soft' management.

Tom Peters wrote about successful businesses having 'simultaneous loose-tight properties' which sounds like management jargon, but says something important.

Ed Nevis personalised these polarities in the characters of the detectives Sherlock Holmes and Columbo each gathering and making sense of data in quite different ways.

Some hard data is absolutely essential to the running of organisations whatever their purpose. I am amazed at how people can even attempt to manage anything when they don’t actually know how they are doing financially, although after recent events in the City it appears the only thing that was actually counted accurately was the size of salaries and bonuses.

Waiting for the end of the year for the accountants to tell you whether to hand out bonuses or P45s is not smart whether you run a corner shop, a charity or other kind of organisation. Charities at least have the excuse that their aims are not to make a profit, but I doubt whether their beneficiaries or employees will be so forgiving when their jobs and services are cut.

For each organisation there will be other hard measures which will be it's 'temperature, pulse and respiration' – vital signs of organisational health.

Customers and front line staff are often best placed to determine what these 'vital signs' are. Sometimes a savvy consultant can help too!

Of course if all you are concerned about is the bottom line and other 'hard' data, you will also miss the elements that don't lend themselves to numerical measures.

Your reputation, how customers feel, what employees think about the workplace, how well complaints are handled – all require careful listening and responsive 'soft' skills.

In the words of the song:

"It ain't what you do – it's the way that you do it - that's what gets results"