It takes real genius to hit your targets

I rang my doctor's surgery recently. I could not get an appointment for that day or the next. So they asked me to call back two days later. I followed their advice and got an appointment.

No need to worry, there's no sign of swine flu. But the thought crossed my mind: why could they not give me an appointment for later that week to start with? Why did I have to ring back?

Apparently, the trick has to do with performance measures. I am told that surgeries are encouraged to see a patient within 48 hours of a request.

What a good idea, I thought. And what if they cannot fit you in within those two days? Simple, they just ask you to ring back in a few days to request a new appointment, rather than scheduling one that is outside their good performance measure! Even cleverer, I thought!

Why am I so impressed? Because I find that human beings are real geniuses when it comes to making their personal performance measures look good. Add some kind of motivational reward, and they will be more creative than Leonardo Da Vinci on Ecstasy.

This is why I always take a real hard look at the measures that businesses have in place. If you measure your sales people on monthly performance, you will keep getting the artificial sales lift on the last days of each month, which tend to mess up the supply chain and cost you dear.

If you measure your factory on efficiency or overhead recovery, you will keep getting more stock than you need. No amount of common sense will overwrite the way you measure your people if the measures are misaligned. But you can see where modern measures such as 'adherence to schedule', or 'stock turn' drive everyone in the right direction without the need for tricks. Now that's supply chain thinking.

Hugh Williams is founder of supply chain planning specialist consultancy Hughenden​