Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse
If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability.Absolutely, could not agree more. This is the only way to beat gamification of metrics in my opinion.There is a worrying trend of treating staff as equally capable but untrusted cogs in a wheel, and metricising performance. I fundamentally believe that no amount of rules or metrics can turn a bad academic into a good one, an unsafe doctor into a safe one or a crooked politician into an honest public servant. We have to calm down with the metrics, accreditations and regulations, and accept that some people are better than others at certain things, hire the right people and trust them to do a good job.