This happens in organizations that don't measure and respect precursors or leading indicators of success/failure -- organizations that do not practice organizational observability, to coin a phrase. Which is to say, most of them, because this is not something one thinks of until one has suffered its absence. Your managers have to think like SREs, and be technically sophisticated enough to model and address this problem.
Does anyone know any great management books on this subject?
The High Velocity Edge had a lot about this subject.
The most memorable example was at a hospital, nurses would occasionally pick up the wrong vial. They always noticed before injecting, but there were lots of close calls that didn’t get tracked anywhere. Once they started tracking that as a leading indicator, it became pretty obvious that the vials needed a better design to prevent even the possibility of grabbing the wrong one. Also, if the hospital never realized this problem and someone got hurt, they would’ve ended up with a much worse solution like “double check really close”
This is a great insight, the idea that management has to look at leading indicators for the org itself. Makes me think that beyond line management, a manger’s job is to behave as an investor and steward of the org, instead of getting involved in the details.
Not a management book per se, but Working Backwards popularised an Amazon approach of thinking about the organisation in terms of mechanisms. You might find that useful.
I’ve always wanted to dig into Scarlet Ink, Dave Anderson’s blog, but never have, and I suspect it’ll be quite useful for you too.
> This happens in organizations that don't measure and respect precursors or leading indicators of success/failure
This happens in organizations that become over reliant on metrics and indicators of success/failure instead of recognizing that these are fuzzy concepts and indicators are just that... indications, not answers.
Does anyone know any great management books on this subject?