When you drive, you should look at what?

Here’s some interesting text from the book I’m reading now;

“People manage to the measures!

Sometimes they even manipulate the measures!

A metrics scorecard acts like a car's dashboard.

If you watch it instead of the road, you will crash!”

Karen Phelan, I'm Sorry I Broke Your Company: Why Management Consultants Are the Problem, Not the Solution, 2013

This book shocked me; then, I felt it to the bone. When I learned many numbers, stat, finance at business school,　my first impression is that business is not such simple that I can measure by numbers. Of course, ROE, ROI, PBR, EPS, those are useful tools to understand companies and it actually helped me know industries better. As long as being accountant or analyst, that’s the world we live with. Number tells. I know it. But I always have strange feeling with me. It told me that somehow you turned totally wrong corner. En, now I realized that I turned wrong corner quite long time ago. Can I go back? Yes, anytime we can go back as far as we know it is stupid road to go. Btw, it is “Free way”, most people call it.

That’s how I started to study more numbers these days. Doesn’t make sense?? It does make sense. Haha. Once you know the limitation of numbers, you wanna go to the edge. Let’s go to the south of the border and see what it is like; then decide what number can(‘nt) do. It’s easy to say number messed up a company’s goal such as critics. Thing is we are inside of a company and work for our company struggling with dirt. You are the one who fight numbers from stupid management. You should know your enemy better than anyone else in order to win.