Chidem Inch: Verchabess!

The Montebello Armenian Genocide Martyrs' Monument
asbarez.com

     Verchabess… finally.      Today, Tuesday October 29th, was a most special day for Armenians, especially American Armenians. It was today, that the 116th Congress passed House Resolution 296. A summary of the resolution prepared by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress is:

This resolution states that it is U.S. policy to (1) commemorate the Armenian Genocide, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923; (2) reject efforts to associate the U.S. government with efforts to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide or any genocide; and (3) encourage education and public understanding about the Armenian Genocide.

     The full text of the resolution can be found at H.Res.296 - Affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide.      The resolution was introduced back on April 18, 2019. It was voted on today. It passed by a wide margin of 405 to 11 warming the hearts and souls of all of Armenians in this country. The passing of a resolution like this in the House of Representatives has been a long time coming.      It was clear to all that H. Res. 296 was passed today as a reaction to our President abandoning our Kurdish allies in Northern Syria and giving Turkey a green light to move militarily against the them. The New York Times stated that the passing of this resolution was “made possible by a new torrent of bipartisan furor at Turkey.” It was wrong to abandon allies like that and it certainly exposed the intolerance of Turkey for its minorities from Ottoman times to now. Clearly, the Kurds in northern Syria are not Turkish citizens but they did have a organized militia that Turkey perceived might aid the Kurds living in Turkey. Also, Turkey does not want an autonomous or independent Kurdish state on its border.
       No matter what the reason, we have been advocating and waiting for a resolution like this to pass since 1965. That was the 50th Anniversary of the Genocide and marked the political awakening of the Armenians in the US in this regard. Today, it finally happened.     Personally, I am happy in a bittersweet kind of way. We have wanted this for a long time and it is good to see it come to fruition. I think the passing of this resolution will further distance the US from Turkey. Admittedly, it is hard for me to be objective, but I have never understood how the US could be so close to Turkey since the establishment of the current Republic.
      What’s next? What will the passing of this resolution mean for the Armenians? Will our presidents, moving forward, use the word Genocide in their April 24th commemorative messages? Are they under any mandate or obligation to do so? I am not sure about any of this. Given we are 104 years after the fact and the US influence in Turkey is probably at the lowest levels since 1923, I have little expectations. I am afraid that will be nothing more than a little speed bump for Turkey.
      For Armenians, we start thinking reparations immediately after recognition. This is why the Republic of Turkey will never recognize what happened as a genocide. It was. I do not see the US advocating for reparations. But then, we were not sure a resolution like this would pass either. Let us, therefore, keep advocating for, as the resolution stated, “Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians” as well as the Kurds.
      Thank you Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and 166th Congress.

Metrics: Don't Overfocus on One

www.klipfolio.com/

     A friend posted an article on Facebook back in May. It was from The Chicago Reporter and was titled Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy – known for 100% college acceptance rates – put reputation ahead of results.
     Without reading the article, I commented that “When an organization focuses and stakes everything on one metric, achieving that metric replaces the original and noble mission.” She replied, “I personally believe it's a much more complicated issue than one metric.”
     Of course, she was right, but, and there had to be a but, we should not underestimate the undermining havoc that can be caused by over-focusing on one metric. Doing such will have unintended and sometimes negative consequences. I say this from my years of quality management experience in which selection of the right metric(s) is the very important first step and often the hardest step in problem solving and process improvement. The late great Genichi Taguchi used to emphasize this all the time.
     What seems to have happened to this school is akin to what a major health clinic is often suspected of. The health entity claims to have a high rate of curing a certain disease that has a high mortality rate. One of the ways they make this claim is by only treating those patients that have a high probability of survival if treated promptly. They give the impression that they can magic because of their high cure rates.
     It makes for great advertising in both cases, but the missions of both organizations have been hijacked by the focus on only one measure. Imagine going to the health clinic with the hope hyped in the advertising only to be turned away because your case does not meet their qualification criteria. Imagine being asked to leave a school because there is a good chance you will not be going to college.
     Metrics are huge in the business world. Given the transactional nature of commerce, it is easy to have more concise and well-defined measures that provide meaningful feedback on how some aspect of one’s operations are performing. Historically, most metrics were financial. Money metrics are easier to define and track. Money is additive. Your money and my money become our money. Sales minus costs becomes profits. That is the whole purpose of the accounting function: to generate, track, and analyze financial measures. Non-financial measures were generally more difficult and costly to generate. With the advent of business-wide computer systems, there has been an exponential growth in non-financial transactional data generated and saved. This data made the non-financial measures more economical to gather and track.
     The focus should be on a an agreed upon set of metrics that helps us from focusing on just one metric. This concept was formalized by David P. Norton and Robert S. Kaplan in a seminal 1992 article in the Harvard Business Review: The Balanced Scorecard—Measures that Drive Performance. Even before reading this I believed in tracking several metrics whenever possible. I believe it even more these days when calculating them is so much easier. I like to have a broad perspective and also want more in depth, diagnostic, metrics at hand when a C-level executive inevitably asks when a Key Performance Indicator (a metric of focus) takes a turn for the worse. As the name of their article suggests, balance is the key. Obsessing on one metric could skew management behavior and compromise the true mission of the organization.