From the excellent The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:
“Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature.”
In an era where measurement leads to management, and therefore it’s measurement uber alles, this quote reminds us that things have their most powerful place in the whole only in relation to their natural settings and scales. In organizations and communities it seems that something measureable becomes more important than those things we cannot measure, and we inflate those things to absurd dimensions to the exclusion of the synergy that arises from the tangible and intangible elements working together.