Carrots, sticks, and too many targets

Miffa Salter thinks that Britain has become a nation of target toting under-achievers. Public sector planning has become a managerial exercise in measurement. The commercial construction industry in the wider development sector has become obsessed with tick box schemes and performance indicators. What are we all measuring?

If you aren't already feeling guilty, James Strachan's recent public condemnation of our 'slavish devotion' to benchmarks and all that goes with them should now have you looking shamefaced at your own lengthening list of aims and objectives.

Of course it is always nice when someone as high profile as Mr Audit Commission himself puts his head above the parapet - even if he is telling us something we already know.

Even better when he is joined - as he has been recently - by that unlikeliest of bedfellows in the form of the Fabian Society, as it too decries the current target centred approach to public service reform.

But the question is, will all the rhetoric really change a political psychology hell bent on making us perform like monkeys.

Now, before you all round on me to highlight the dangers of professional complacency let me make this clear. I'm not arguing for a target free haven for the public sector. Rather, I'm saying that when I work with a bunch of planning professionals, and see them groaning under 75 different targets, I just know that something has gone seriously wrong.

These people are committed to making a difference, and they are being treated like idiots.

Pity even more the poor local communities hounded to within an inch of their lives to define and uphold the various hoops which the development professionals hurl themselves through.

Since amnesties seem to be another policy fashion, maybe it is time to call a halt to the target setting of yesteryear. Imagine the scene as senior managers from across health, education, environment and beyond creep furtively forward to deposit their 'waiting list', 'league table' or Key Performance Indicator assessment in some suitably brightly coloured wheely bin.

Of course reducing the stockpile of targets may not curtail the production of measurements. Moreover, there are always those who prefer to retain their secret stash, wedded as they are to a regime where the stick will always outweigh the carrot.

In such contexts it may be helpful to reflect on a recent insight from Olympian runner and New York Marathon marvel Marla Runyan, who is both a world class athlete and officially blind. When asked why and how she ran so competitively, she had one very simple response - 'I just can't see the finish line'. Miffa Salter 21 August 2003

A version of Miffa's article first appeared in Planning, the magazine of the Royal Town Planning Institute on 24 January 2003, and is kindly reproduced here.

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