To get into shape I went on a diet. Dieting and controlling sugar and carbohydrate intake did indeed make me lose weight but with no improvement in the look and feel of my physique.
Bulky as ever, a bit of study revealed what was wrong and what I could do to look and feel even better.
I discovered that a kilogram of fat is not equal to a kilogram of muscle in terms of volume and quality. Our bodies need fat, but not an excess, while I had reduced the quantum of fat what I needed to build was more muscle. Our bodies also need muscles which are constantly degrading unless we work at maintaining them. This requires exercise and resistance training along with some sports.
Organisations are similar.
When we use only a single measure to evaluate performance and if pursued we evenly achieve them but then we are surprised to discover that some other parameters have gone for a toss.
Take the example of quick changeover time for tooling up from one product to another. Using various techniques and management practices, we were pleased to see that the changeover time did indeed come down. Unfortunately, much after the self-congratulations had died down, we discovered that the net output remained the same.
This was because the staff were simply massaging data. They were transferring one set of parameters to another head.
Genuine performance improved only when we conjunctly measured both set-up time, production and productivity that superior performance was witnessed.
This example of weight loss highlights that life is multidimensional and non-linear. If we think in terms of binaries and single dimensions, we are bound to delude and maybe even harm ourselves.
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Ref: G0961 - V0073
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