Taming “Wild Problems”: Measure Everything That Matters

Every problem is not solvable, but every problem is measurable. This assertion is the key to tackling problems in public services including courts, business, and life in general. Surprising to me is that even astute scholars take exception to this, among them  is Russ Roberts, the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, and host of the award-winning podcast EconTalk: Conversation for the Curious. The belief that certain things, dubbed “wild problems” by Professor Roberts, cannot be measured does a disservice to courts and other public and private organizations.

There are many benefits to measuring everything that matters. It allows organizations to  focus on and to operationalize the most important problems and issues facing them,  to track progress over time and identify areas of improvement,  to compare their performance to that of other organizations and learn from the differences, and, finally, to identify and correct problems before they become too serious.

In a 2016 interview with Kyle Peterson of the Wall Street Journal, shortly after he wrote his  acclaimed book, How Adam Smith Can Change Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness, Roberts  approvingly cited the economist Friedrich Hayek’s 1974 Nobel lecture in which Hayek suggests that macroeconomics is scientism, an overextension of  scientific ideas, methods, practices, and attitudes to matters of human social and political concern. He makes an analogy to a sporting event saying that “ if we knew everything there was to know , if we had all the data, we could  figure out who is going to win a sporting event – including how well each player slept the night before, their nutrition, their worries, their anxieties, their mental state, et cetera.” And he said we can’t know those things. In his  latest book, Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us, an otherwise interesting and useful book, Professor Roberts doubles down on his assertion that “wild” problems” such as knowing how to win sporting events defy performance measurement and management (PMM).

 But this is precisely what the Los Angeles Rams, the National Football League’s 2021 Superbowl champion has done to snuff out injuries before they happen in a violent sport notorious for injuries. The team has successfully tackled one of the thorniest issues in professional football – an issue that Roberts  likely would consider a “wild problem. ” The Rams are  harnessing the numbers that are flooding professional football how to keep players physically and mentally healthy, avoiding injury and playing at their maximum potential.

The Rams coaches and trainers, and its analytics department track numbers such as how many yards players have run at a high speed, as well as their deceleration and acceleration times. More data are collected in the team’s training facility. And twice a week players  fill out a survey. When the results of the survey align with a player’s other metrics, coaches and trainers see it as a red flag signaling  that something  needs to be done, such as for example, making practices lighter, giving  players more time off the playing field, or curtailing their number of   “snaps,” i.e.,  the number of plays they are on  the field. Years ago, coaches may think a player is fatigued. Now they can confirm their gut.

These data analytics are working for the Rams. The team ranked in the top five NFL teams in fewer games missed due to injury for five straight years.

Advocates of rigorous performance measurement believe that courts,  public and private organizations, as well as individuals seeking the good life,  should count what counts and measure what matters. This means that they should measure everything that matters. While some things are more difficult to measure, and when measured provide challenges of interpretation, the notion that many aspects of performance are impossible to measure is  wrongheaded. (For an extended discussion of the common misconceptions that some things  can’t be measured, see the  2010 second edition of Douglas W. Hubbard’s book How to Measure Anything.)

The embrace of data analytics  does not mean the abandonment of the human element. Yes, chips, advanced tracking technology, and sophisticated data analytics have replaced and quantified much  human  intuition and  judgement, the latter  remains an important part of performance measurement and management (PMM). The Rams do not blindly rely on data analytics. Reggie Scott, the Rams vice president of sports medicine, sees their approach a marriage of the objective and subjective, of the quantitative and the qualitative.

 

Upon close reading, even Professor Roberts seems to bow to the power of measurement of wild

problems. In “Summing Up,” the last chapter of his thoroughly engaging 2022 book, he writes that some

questions of life do not have answers, they are not problems to be solved, but rather “mysteries to be

experienced, tasted, and savored.” True enough. But is exploring and registering this experience  not

what measurement is all about? 

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