Target Obsession Disorder

What we like to term Target Obsession Disorder (TOD) seldom leaves the headlines, whether the targets are concerned with cutting down waiting lists in hospitals and other medical services, increasing the percentage of children in schools who reach a certain standard of literacy and numeracy by a certain age, or getting a higher percentage of young people into university. TOD creates more layers of bureaucracy to manage it, mountains of paperwork and form filling, and undermines the balance between work and effectiveness.

In professions like social work some surveys show that client contact time has been reduced by up to 80% because of paper (and email) work. Research recently reported that, whenever a politician declares that his department is going to cut 'red tape', it always gets worse! When an obsession with collecting information (which of course is another autistic trait) dominates the activity of an organisation it quickly overrides the actions of people who are trying to get real work done. In hospitals this reductionist approach means patients' real needs are pushed further down the priority list;[38] in schools even more children fail to get a basic education[39] and our universities are dumbing down to meet the targets set for them.[40] The lack of real organising ideas in politics is evidenced by the fanfare with which New Labour introduced targets in the NHS, schools and elsewhere, only to follow up some years later with their next big idea, which was to do away with targets!

Running any complex organisation is a holistic operation. Of course targets and goals are useful. But they should never become the main tool of management because they encourage lopsidedness. When 'targets' and 'goals' are primarily aimed at one aspect of a problem, such as cutting down the waiting list for hip operations in a hospital, for example, the inevitable consequence is that you imbalance the organisation of the rest of the hospital.[41] In just the same way, if teachers are told what to teach, and have to follow a rigidly prescribed curriculum, their need to be involved in creatively awakening the understanding of their pupils, through their own enjoyment of being stretched by the subject they are teaching, is frustrated. And nobody benefits when teaching stops being meaningful for the teacher.

Likewise, when the balance in the attention exchange between teacher and pupil is lost, because the material being taught is not connected up to each pupil's existing knowledge, or there is too much emotional arousal in the class, a teacher cannot react in flexible ways to the needs of each individual — which is serious because every child is unique, and being flexible when teaching is vital. Setting targets, however, is great for producing statistics. Sometimes it can seem that putting a spin on statistics is all that politicians and higher civil servants are doing.[42] They appear to the rest of us to operate a primitive, illogical, 'government by appearance' strategy as if the people of this country have created nothing more than an appearance culture. They protest otherwise of course, but of 'knowledge' and 'thinking things through' there is little sign that ordinary citizens can recognise. Instead, politicians and their servants involve themselves in "ceaseless activity to grapple with the unacknowledged consequences of yesterday's mistakes".[43]

For example, when government departments do ask for input, in an effort to do better, they tightly restrict the way in which that input can be given, thus undermining the endeavour by making it difficult for people who could really be useful to contribute. New Labour's much touted public relations programme, the 'Big Conversation', launched in 2003, is one such example.[44] Another is the way the National Institute for Clinical Guidance (NICE) tightly specifies the form in which evidence can be submitted which, by their very nature, preclude other, perhaps more useful, information from practitioners in the front-line being considered.

When obsessive straight-line thinking drives government and its administration, it is hugely cavalier with our money (no politician is made to suffer from wasting £millions of our tax revenues; the worst that can occur is getting voted out[45]). It also disempowers those people who are trying to get on with useful work. And the high levels of frustration and stress that this autistic form of government causes ultimately impacts on the mental health of us all. (The international dimension is even more autistic, as is daily demonstrated by the mayhem done to the smooth running of industries and social affairs by the centralising policies of the EU. These are seeping steadily into every facet of life in Europe and undermining our innate need to control our own law making and the ways we conduct our social and business affairs.[46] Without autonomy, people become slaves, as anyone knows who has been 'chained to their desk' by the endless form-filling demands required by EU legislation.[47])

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