The People Measurement Manual: Measuring Attitudes, Behaviours and Beliefs in your Organisation

Citation

Trickey, K.V. (2003), "The People Measurement Manual: Measuring Attitudes, Behaviours and Beliefs in your Organisation", Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 122-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/14678040310507888

I was interested to review this volume because of the promise of the sub title which included “measuring attitudes, behaviours and beliefs”. Having spent ten years working with individuals on belief and attitude change via my coaching work, I was interested to see how this would be brought under a more formalised quantitative or evaluative framework. Sadly I was to be disappointed in this and many other issues. Wealleans is, by his own admission, a bit of an expert on this kind of thing and this is not his first book in this area. His previous volume The Organisational Measurement Manual was the reason the title to hand was suggested by the publisher. The notes on the dust jacket state: “David Wealleans began his career as an engineer, from where he developed his interest in processes and systems. As his expertise in these areas grew, the field of knowledge expanded to include the contribution that people make to those systems. His approach is still that of the engineer, with a sense of security with processes: ‘for all this type of monitoring I prefer to use forms over training, written procedures and so on”’ (p. 101).

Looking at the book as a “manual” I was surprised not to find copious in‐text referencing to external sources and a nice chunky reference list or bibliography. In fact hardly anybody else gets a mention. This fundamentally compromises the work as there is no support for what is being said apart from the author and if the gentle reader did want further information, no assistance is given. Where some guidance is given it is unhelpful: “a simple Internet search will reveal many Web sites (most of them from university and other academic sources) explaining how to perform simple statistical tests … ” (p. 116). No examples of such sites are listed and no Web addresses given.

I read on a regular basis, so 147 pages was going to be easy: sadly not this time. I found I did not like the tone of the author or his style. I have been forced to spend a long time with this slim volume! His own beliefs and values are too evident in his writing. I am sure the man is a complete star when it comes to processes (that don’t answer back) it is just when he talks about people his antipathy shows. The author has a consistently bleak view of the nature of people in organisations, well, to be honest – subordinates, as clearly the processes he is talking about are done by management on the work force. A typical example is found in the chapter on Measurement by interview: “Any [interviewee] that spent a disproportionate amount of time in the interview will inevitably complain about it to their workmates” (p. 80).

The book has been extensively padded to reach its current modest size and the vagueness in the author’s style pervades: “This should not deter us, however, since the whole subject of employee measurement needs applied effort to grasp; we simply need to apply some imagination and persistence” (p. 16). The use of text boxes providing “tips” again is inconsistent as the contents vary from the useful to the banal. For example: “Watch how measurements are used in your organisation: if a poor set of data results in somebody senior stalking around in a bad mood and making random decisions, perhaps the right level of detail is not being measured” (p. 12).

The work as it stands seems too much like the raw text produced by the author before the industrious editor got to work to demand revisions to craft the book into a useful manual “fit for purpose”. What we have is a strange hybrid: a book written for top management in a command economy with insufficient detail or precision to be given to their subordinates to enable them to do the work that is required on the people side of the organisation. I would not recommend this book for use by colleagues who wish to explore people measurement or to students as an introduction to the area.