Why?

The prevailing system of metrics ... financial accountancy, market indexes, economic indicators, etc. ... has become deeply flawed at the the organizational level, the capital market level and the macroeconomic level. The flaws have compounded over time with disastrous consequences, and by 2008 the capital markets became paralyzed and the economic system froze like an automobile engine without oil. TVM is needed because there has been a complete breakdown in the system used for analysis of organizational performance and the economic performance of society.

Capital market performance and money wealth have been used as a proxy for socio-economic performance. Profit and stock price growth has been the primary goal of private and corporate enterprise with little attention paid to the impact on society as a whole. Excessive reliance on computer models, simulation and statistics with too little validation is a formula for catastrophe. A good part of economic data is based on small surveys and a lot of statistics. This system gives good results at low cost in a stable environment, but falls apart whenever there are changes, and especially disruptive changes. Modern financial accounting has failed to get money capital allocated efficiently to solve the world's critical issues ... endemic poverty ... poor health ... lack of education ... basic services ... etc.

What?

TVM has two roles: (1) score-keeping; and, (2) data that supports management information that facilitates improved performance. TVM is a structured system of data collection and analysis to enable a paradigm shift in the way socio-economic performance is measured. TVM is score-keeping for the game is life ... and the pursuit of happiness ... and the playing field is the community.

But TVM is only score-keeping and statistics ... and is neutral. It is not a rule making authority like the National Basketball Association. It is not a referee that ensures the game is played by the rules. It is not a coach that gets the team ready for a game and calls the plays. It is not a player. It is not a spectator merely getting entertainment. It is not an owner that benefits from the outcome of the game ... or a gambler trying to profit from a wager on the outcome of the game. TVM is independent and its score-keeping and data are to be trusted. Score-keeping is more than determining the game winner ... there are also a whole range of performance statistics.

Examples of scoring systems:

• Golf: The number of strokes used for the round. Lowest number wins.
• Cricket: Number of runs. Largest number of runs wins.
• Tennis: Numbers of winning points wins a game. Most games won wins a set. Most sets won wins a match. Most matches won wins a tournament.
• Baseball: Number of runs. Largest number of runs wins. The system of runs is quite complicated, but simplifies to number of runs to determine the winner.
• Soccer: Number of goals scored.
• American football: Number of points scored ... with points assigned for different winning actions: touchdowns, conversions, field goals, etc.

Where?

TVM is about a place ... any place ... anywhere ... everywhere! The good thing about a place is that it has perpetual existence. A place never moves ... there is a basis for longitudinal time comparison that is reliable.

Example: Okehampton in England

I grew up in Okehampton ... a small rural market town in the southwest of England. In 1935 it had a population of around 3,500. In the 1950s the population was something around 4,200. Back in the 11th century when the Doomsday Book was written up after the Norman conquest, Okehampton had a population of around 600 and was an important frontier town. Things changed ... but the place has kept on going.

TVM has a focus on community. TVM recognizes that there are big differences between places ... and even similar places have a myriad of subtle differences. Focus on the place ... gives clarity at the community level. At the national level, it is, perhaps, possible to understand something about the “state” of the national economy, but rather little about how and why the economy is in this state.

It is possible to do management by walking around at the community level ... and there is no need to rely on sophisticated survey techniques and statistics that have been popularized in academia and research institutes and provide surprisingly unreliable management information. Community level data start to tell something or real importance ... and it becomes possible to see what are the factors that have resulted in the state of the community. If something in the data is surprising ... data at the community level helps to pin-point what caused this and why and how this came about.

Some communities are too big and complex to be easy to understand ... in which case the neighborhood may be a better level for detailed data. Common sense applies. In some cases it may be appropriate to get data at the block level. In high density urban settings, the block may still be quite a large population, and the economic activities quite complex.

When?

When matters. The very idea of progress implies something about time. Are things better now than they were? The TVM system helps answer this in a rigorous way. Changes over time are the main measure of progress. The history of change may be studied at leisure ... but the data about changes that are taking place now has to be available in a timely manner.

Management information needs timely data in order to be useful. The value of data usually diminishes with time. Where conditions change from day to day the data should be collected daily. Where conditions change more slowly, the data can be collected less frequently. The key is to collect data so that the results of data analysis are “in time” for good decisions to be made when they are needed.

Production Reports at Southern States, Inc.

This story illustrates the vital importance of timely information. Most of my career I have been associated with corporate accounting, consulting, planning and the analysis of performance. I have not done many line management assignments ... but in this case some years back I was appointed VP Manufacturing for Southern States Inc, a manufacturing company making air-break switches for the electric utility industry during a reorganization to improve the company's results.

The company had orders, but the factory was a bottleneck ... and we had neither the time nor the money to invest in expanded manufacturing facilities. We had to do better with what we had. For years the factory production report had been written up and distributed every day around 10 am ... informing everyone of the production numbers for the day before ... a fairly standard practice! I changed this to give management a report at 8.30 am (the factory got started at 7.30 am) about the anticipated production for the day ... today, not yesterday! By 9 am the support staff were deployed fixing problems that would improve performance today! The factory always beat its anticipated production ... and the factory production almost doubled without any major capital investment to expand the capacity!

TVM is both a comprehensive framework and a modular framework. As a comprehensive system, everything is included. As a modular system, important matters can be addressed with limited resources and high impact benefit realized at a modest cost.

While there are many initiatives to improve the reporting of organizations, and an established framework of macro-economic indicators ... there are few initiatives that address socio-economic performance from the perspective of the community.

TVM becomes possible because of many low cost ways there are now for collecting and storing data, and for its analysis. The structure of social networks is supported by an IT infrastructure that could also be used for TVM data. Social networks make it possible for people to interact in ways previously impossible ... TVM and social network infrastructure makes it possible for everything of any relevance to a community to be on the record and in place where it may be used usefully.

Who?

TVM is for everyone ... and TVM is facilitated by everyone. TVM may be implemented through an organization or not ... but the data still reflects a community perspective, and the data are neutral and aim to merely reflect community reality.

While the family is one of the key units of society ... and within the family the well-being and happiness of every individual is important, for the development and management of public policy, the community ... or neighborhood or block ... is easier to use as an indicator of progress and the effectiveness of interventions. There are some datasets that are best compiled using the family as the unit because this is the best place to identify impact ... as for example, the case of public health, where interventions are undertaken in the community as a whole, and the impact is best observed within the individual families.