Prioritisation: when metrics decide the agenda
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme, one question deserves attention before individual techniques. How can a manager ask people to devote time to stated priorities if performance metrics encourage a different allocation?
What the literature establishes
Steven Kerr (1975, Academy of Management Journal) examines a recurring organisational mismatch: rewarding certain behaviours while claiming to want others. Drawing on examples rather than an experimental estimate, his article shows why actual rewards deserve as much scrutiny as stated objectives. For time management, this suggests a concrete hypothesis: schedules may follow what counts in appraisals rather than what appears in the strategy.
The mechanism: shifting effort towards what gets measured
Bengt Holmström and Paul Milgrom (1991, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization) formalise this problem in a model where one person performs several tasks whose outcomes are not equally measurable. A strong incentive attached to one dimension can divert effort away from another that is nevertheless valuable to the organisation. This mechanism does not require bad faith: it can reflect a consistent response to appraisal rules.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that numerical targets should be abolished or that every activity should be measured. These works support neither prescription as a general rule: their contribution is to reveal the risk of distortion created by rewards and measurement. The managerial question therefore concerns the balance between assessed dimensions, stated priorities and the judgement applied to work. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these works cannot quantify
An organisational analysis and an economic model cannot establish how many hours a team loses pursuing a poorly chosen metric. An activity that occupies a large share of the schedule may also reflect a regulatory obligation, a technical dependency or a legitimate customer request. Attributing that allocation solely to metrics therefore requires a local check, not an isolated reading of the dashboard.
A practical check in Bâle
In Basel, a pharmaceutical or life sciences team, a Rhine logistics unit or an international R&D group can test this alignment over two weeks, using a protocol proposed here rather than taken from the cited studies. Before observation begins, the manager identifies a specific priority, names the metric that might compete with it and agrees how much time to reserve for it, without compromising quality or safety requirements. The team then records the time actually devoted to this priority and documents every reduction in favour of an activity assessed by that metric, distinguishing external obligations from internal trade-offs. Comparing agreed and actual time, then examining the recorded reasons, provides a verifiable basis for deciding whether to change the schedule, workload or appraisal rule. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Basel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Basel
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