The football coach carefully planned and then studied the statistics of the games his team had played. In each of the past three contests, he noted, they had scored the same number of touchdowns as the opposing team but had lost the game because two extra point attempts had been blocked. As a result of this data, he decided that they should spend more time learning how to block the kicks the opponents attempted after they scored touchdowns.

Most of the practice that week was spent on this effort and the team was rewarded in the following game by being able to block three extra points. Even though they lost the game 18 to 7, they were encouraged by their success and began to devote all of their time to kick blocking. Soon they were denying their opponents that one point seven and eight times a game. They scored no touchdowns of their own but were brilliant in accomplishing their chosen goal. They never won another game or made another point, and the coach was fired. This is an example of being carried away by the concepts of containment and measurement.

It was some time later, and in a new profession, before it began to dawn on the coach that the best system for containing extra points was to keep the other team from scoring touchdowns. A defense based on prevention achieved more than one focused on a single point. This sort of discovery happens regularly. A city commission found that improved street lighting reduced crime rates more than extra police; a person with a weight problem found that a new, much more accurate scale had no effect on the weight loss program. We must be careful not to confuse the systems of measurement with the setting of goals. Keeping neat records of overspending is not the way to manage money.

The instruments on a car's dashboard are examples of control charts. Their purpose is to assist the operator in managing the vehicle. They control nothing in themselves; they just display what's happening, and they haven't changed much in 50 years. This is also true of statistical control charting.

Just as automobile drivers are successful when they are carefully trained, and are responsible for their own actions - so workers are successful when the same conditions exist. When they are directed to do useless work, or limited in their communications, then they fail.

All that comes from management. When management depends on focused systems rather than people, it pays the price.