Inputs and Outputs

12 February 2008 at 12:18 am Peter G. Klein 4 comments

| Peter Klein |

In academia we measure outputs, not inputs. Promotion, tenure, and other rewards are based on publications, grants, teaching evaluations, and so on, not effort. So why do we talk so much about inputs? He’s in his office all the time! I get emails from her at 3:00am! Whenever I see him he’s typing at the computer! Even economists, who rightly reject the labor theory of value, talk this way. What gives?

I like the way Kieran puts it:

You have time to blog? I work so hard I couldn’t possibly fit that sort of frivolous nonsense into my day. You have time to watch television? I don’t even own a TV. (I am happy to see this one is now very nearly a cliché.) You go jogging in the morning? How do you find the time? You have time to shower afterward? Personal grooming distracts from the research effort. You walk to the other end of the building to use the bathroom? I specifically requested that my office have the toilet seat model of the Aeron chair installed. A real time saver, that one. You have small children? Actually, why am I even wasting my time talking to you right now? Goodbye.

It seems to me that very nearly all of this sort of guff is pure posturing, net of a very small kernel of obvious truth about not whiling away the weeks playing gin rummy or watching movies to the exclusion of all else. It’s a distinctively American sort of posturing, too — you can probably trace it back to Ben Franklin or someone. My early academic habitus was formed in Ireland, where the preferred posture (following the English model) is the perfect opposite: effortless brilliance is the order of the day. In that setting, it was important to cultivate a reputation for never doing any work at all, and yet still be getting First Class Honours in your exams and, later, dashing off brilliant essays almost by accident, making devastating remarks in an offhand way, etc. Slavish hard work and steady effort is all very well if you want to be an office clerk, or perhaps a postman. Adjustment to the culture of American graduate school was therefore somewhat difficult for me, but on the other hand I did it just in time to avoid the natural tendency of the earlier model, which is a drinking problem and a tragic early death.

I once had a colleague brag to me about how he was writing a paper, and talking to his coauthor on the phone, from the hospital at the very moment his wife was delivering one of his children. What a stud.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Management Theory.

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4 Comments Add your own

1. Mauro Mello Jr. | 12 February 2008 at 5:54 am

It seems academia is getting contaminated by the same set of attitudes that came to be expected from most workers in fast-paced, high-stakes “knowledge” environments. It is almost too common for people to hold conference calls on cellphones while going from one meeting to the next, while eating something for a missed lunch, carrying a laptop on the other hand while talking to coworkers on the way to said meetings (which will spill over into commuting time, subsequently at home) – and they brag about it! Ah, the buzzwords: multitasking, doing more with less, delivering value for money, incentivizing (!), 24/7 availability, etc. Sigh. You end up being squeezed and audited both ways: on your inputs and outputs, and will have to show proof that you cannot work less than at the rate you already are.

These people, their effectiveness notwithstanding, are held in high esteem by impressed one-minute(-pointy-haired)-type managers and are often touted as examples to be followed by others. I second Kieran’s view that this is mostly an American phenomenon, though one which is increasingly being adopted by, or rather exported to other countries, courtesy of buzzword consultants (and, I would say, many clueless adopters).

To me, this is the result of a fragmented, disjointed view of the technology and governance of organizations, where each of their many components try to single-mindedly optimize its own performance and impose on others its understanding of what the optimization rules should be (e.g., accountants winning over engineering, sales winning over engineering, accountants winning over academics, etc.)
2. Gary Peters | 12 February 2008 at 4:32 pm

Is reading a blog worse than writing one?
3. Bo | 12 February 2008 at 5:56 pm

This is indeed an interesting phenomena. My take on this is that people who find it necessary to work (and talk about it) constantly simply lack efficiency – or perhaps intelligence…If you really have to work 15+ hours per day 7 days a week AND you still do not win any Nobel Prizes or become professor at the age of 22 etc. then it must be because you are simply not talented enough and thus rather than working harder you should consider changing your career path. It is very baseball players that become MLB players simply by hitting more balls at practice, nor do most of the contestants at American Idol head for a sparkling career in singing simply because they try harder…talent is 90% and effort is 10%…Yet we keep trying…
4. Christos | 12 February 2008 at 9:11 pm

Maybe because input in academia is a good – though imperfect – proxy for output.