• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 9, 2019

It's said that Don Graham, whose family used to own The Washington Post, and who is a former Facebook board member, blasted insiders who criticize Facebook now as having “all the courage of the last man leaping on the pile at a football game.”

That’s a clever turn of a phrase -- from someone who apparently did not play either high school or college football. And it shows a serious lack of understanding about management by objective (MBO).

Most American executives used to be kept up at night worrying about things like supply chains, retail distribution, market share and stock prices. Now things like SMART, KPIs and OKRs have them tossing and turning (I blame my snoring on them, but am not sure my wife is buyin’ it).

If you are a football player at a big high school or almost any college, you are subject to being “taped” throughout many practices and all games.  The coaches then review the tapes and grade your performance (while adding in snide commentary to the other players designed to humiliate you: “Hey Simpson, you just made that guy’s highlight reel. Nice job, son!”)

Since coaches have to suffer sleepless MBO nights, they probably impose them on players. So, part of your performance grade might be how many tackles you are in on. That means at the end of the play, you had better be in that pile somewhere -- and not off to the side like a tourist standing on a street corner wondering which is the East Side and which is the West.

So, Donny, MBOs are thus a powerful incentive to be ”the last man leaping on a pile at a football game.”

Making your numbers has become a national obsession.  So delivery guys drive like Talladega competitors, retail salespeople (the few, the proud, the disappearing) relentlessly suggest other items for your cart, and kids cheat their way to better grades in order to meet their goal of getting into Harvard (at least those whose parents can’t afford to buy their way on to the crew team).

It's clear that wives have secret KPIs for their husbands, since most of what we do is simply wrong or never enough. Raise your hand if you have ever loaded the dishwasher “wrong!” or not folded the towels “correctly.” I am convinced there's no right way to make the bed, regardless of how many times you try. Has something to do with a missing DNA strand.

When you are first married, you both have OKRs for the other person in the bedroom. But somehow the annual performance review is never completed -- and the one who's not meeting their KPIs is perpetually in dispute “for as long as you both shall live.”

Some might say this kind of “keeping count” ruins whatever spontaneity tries to survive cohabitation. But hey, as long as I make my OKR’s! You worry about you. Even if you have to pile on.