ABSTRACT
Just as our perspective on performance and performance management and support will change as we begin to view organizational systems as nonlinear dynamical systems, so will our views on measurements and metrics. The attitudes and methods with which we now approach systems behavior measures will not be the same attitudes and methods with which we address chaotic systems. In order to facilitate our way through such systems and make meaningful changes, we will need to develop a way to orient ourselves in a more volatile environment. As we have seen, there is much less stability and much more uncertainty in these systems. When we come to measure the things that are happening and try to project out to anticipate some of the things that may happen, we will be at a loss if we try to apply current performance metrics to the situation. What we will need to do is to accept that measurement criteria will be different and measurement methods will be different. Even the sources of data may be different as we bring together more, not less, information about how our systems are performing as a whole.
