Outside Wisdom posted on July 21, 2009 00:44
Author: Robin F. Goldsmith, JD
Common presumed best practices for determining Return on Investment (ROI), advocated by almost all apparent authorities, in reality often undermine ROI’s very purposes.
ROI is supposed to provide a valid and reliably supportable objective basis for making decisions: the quantified dollar benefits of an approach versus its quantified dollar costs.
However, the customarily recommended practice of listing but not quantifying the dollar value of “intangible” benefits leaves a gaping loophole that can render even seemingly conscientious ROI analysis a deceptive sham.
The dirty little secret of ROI is that voluminous documentation and calculations often are merely a smokescreen obscuring the fact that in most organizations the proponent’s favored outcome almost always prevails. Although perhaps not consciously recognized, calling the exercise “justification” indicates a mindset where there’s not even a pretense of objectivity, since measurements are chosen to justify the proponent’s predefined answer.
Even when the analysis seems impartial, failing to quantify intangibles in reality often causes the game to be fixed, albeit without conscious intent or awareness. That is, if the ROI calculations support the preferred outcome, then the calculations are cited as the basis for deciding in favor of it; and if the objective calculations don’t support the desired answer, the unquantified intangibles provide subjective justification rationale for
disregarding the unfavorable ROI calculations.
Because the intangibles have not been quantified, there often is virtually no limit on how much the proponent can claim that the intangible benefits override the quantified ROI calculations, no matter how bad a deal the tangibles calculations portray.
[Read More...]