‘What you can’t describe, you can’t manage.” So says Dave Norton of the Balanced Scorecard fame. A surprising remark when we have been taught that it is what you can’t measure that you can’t manage. With all the debates, dialogues and discussions on the reproductive-health (RH) bill, and the linked issues that pit—unfairly and sadly—the Church versus the government, one wonders if there is really safety in having the numbers—be they votes in Congress, or participants in “No to RH bill” rallies, or sponsors and advertisers for a pro-RH bill television special.

This situation reminds me of the big insight of performance leadership. Is the Church performing its role effectively and efficiently in society through its advocacies? The traditional view of performance is achieving the performance metrics. Is the Church able to mobilize the people—the faithful and the “unchurched”—to rediscover the underlying value of human life that reproductive health is undermining? Is the Church able to win the magic number of congressmen who will vote against the bill, despite party commitments? But this is the traditional view: performance as a matter of vertical alignment. Is there a tight alignment of people on the ground with decision-makers they have voted to represent them in the legislature and the Executive branches of government?

But there is a new view—the horizontal view of alignment. Is the Church able to bring the burning issues to the crucible of all religious organizations that value life? Is the Church able to bring it to the families, across generations, to be seriously discussed?

And yet there is an even fresher view. The diagonal, zigzag view of alignment. Is the Church able to convert hardliners to see the other side of their arguments? Is the Church able to rouse interest on fundamental issues of rights and responsibilities toward life—unborn or born, young or old, poor or well-off, uneducated, miseducated or educated—in the most unexpected quiet corners of society?

Frank Buytendijk revisits his book Performance Leadership (2008) in an impassioned call for understanding the challenge of new ways of alignment in an age of hyperempowerment. He writes in Management Synergies in the Palladium web site a couple of weeks ago: “Although vertical alignment is still needed to ensure accountability in an organization, it ignores the value of business interfaces and performance networks….After all, performance management is performance relationships.” In the organization called the Filipino nation, focusing on the gains from vertical alignment at any cost only widens the gap of relationships with its citizens. Quo vadis performance leadership? We all need to discover and rediscover new mechanisms and new measures that better reflect the horizontal and diagonal nature of nation-building. Focusing on vertical alignment alone leaves us in the uneasy, unwieldy, temporary comfort of our silos. Was it not John Paul II who said the youth is the treasure of the living Church? Why then do we act unmindful of diminishing the value of their networks and their voices on this issue of their unborn generation? We squander the treasure. We squander our hearts. “Where your heart is, there your treasure is also.”

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