In the Whitewater 2010 City Performance Plan, City Manager Kevin Brunner contends that in 2010, municipal leaders accomplished 87.1% of their goals. (I have embedded the full document below.)
That sounds like an impressive success rate, until one considers that many of the goals listed are ordinary tasks that one should perform fully as part of one’s job.
As it turns out, I’ve been thinking of becoming a professional basketball player for the Miami Heat. Let’s see how far along I am toward that goal:
- Locate a sporting goods store. CHECK!
- Purchase a basketball. CHECK!
- Find a shoe store. CHECK!
- Buy some basketball shoes. CHECK!
- Make sure I save the receipts from the two stores for tax purposes — business expense! CHECK!
- Get a plane ticket to Miami. CHECK!
- Find a hotel in town. CHECK!
- Pick up some cool sunglasses in the hotel gift shop. CHECK!
- Take a cab to the arena where the Heat plays home games. CHECK!
- Actually play on the same court with LeBron and Dwayne. PENDING…
That’s 9 out of 10 — and by City Manager Brunner’s reasoning, I’m 90% of the way toward a professional sports career. That’s — ready? — actually 2.9% closer to my goal than the entire municipal government is toward its goals.
(It’s also higher than my 86.3% achievement in 2008 toward the goal of becoming a ninja, and my 88.9% achievement in 2009 toward the goal of singing at La Scala.)
The inclusion of mundane tasks stacks any supposed achievement in one’s favor.
Of the nearly 150 goals the city manager lists, countless tasks are simply the conventional work of the year. Of all the competed tasks, by my count — and yours may differ — well over half are duties one would normally expect as part of a year’s work. After one excludes the conventional tasks, a majority of tasks weren’t fully completed.
There’s nothing wrong with not reaching all of one’s goals — especially when those goals are lofty ones.
There’s something wrong — risible and refutable — about a municipal leader presenting these numbers as grand progress (up from last year!).
It should be enough to work hard each day, without a ginned up set of percentages to pretend performance is more than it is.
Next — There’s something even worse than inflated percentages.