Zhang Juzheng
The evaluation ledgers
Hang every item on a name and a date
Memorial on auditing documents and assessing each matter, 1573
Orders go down and nobody carries them out. This is about the ledger he used to fix a failure every dynasty had.
What actually happened?
In 1573 he described the situation plainly: the memorials were endless and no office held to anything. Once an order left, nobody tracked it, and there was no record of whether it had been done. His fix was crude. Everything due was entered in a register, in three copies, with a deadline, and struck off item by item when it fell due. If the governors delay, the ministries report it; if the ministries conceal, the six offices report it; if the six offices miss it, we report it. Within a few years an order issued in the morning was obeyed by evening ten thousand li away.
Issued is not finished; struck off is
Most organisations break in the same place: there is a record that the order went out and no record that it came back. Without the act of striking off, work evaporates between layers naturally, and nobody has to answer for the evaporation.
The minutes list thirty actions and not one carries an owner and a date. Two weeks later, fewer than five have a status anyone can state.
The point of three copies is the third one
One copy stayed with the office, one went to the supervising bureau, one to the cabinet. The same item sits in three places that do not report to each other, so any attempt to soften it shows up in the other two. A single ledger never cures delay.
If the task lives only on the delivery team's own board, they define progress. The same list held by the requester and by management is what makes the wording match.
The audit has to reach the top layer
The decisive clause is that if the supervising offices miss it, the cabinet reports them. Nearly every assessment system stops at the supervisors, which makes the supervisors the one link nobody checks, and the whole chain slackens from there.
Who checks the checkers? Without that clause the quality team's own late reports are never pursued, and everyone can see it.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: plenty is decided and little lands, and you want more execution.
Ask first: is there a list with an owner and a deadline on every item, struck off one by one when due, and how many people hold that list?
Where it goes wrong: substituting meetings and emphasis for records; leaving the top layer of the assessment system unexamined.
Lines to keep
The memorials are endless and no office holds to anything.
If the six offices miss it, we report it ourselves.
An order issued in the morning was obeyed by evening.
Same situation, other people are asking
I explained it and what came back was not it.Everything is orderly now and we've somehow got slower.What I ask for and what I get are never the same thing.We added people and less gets finished than before.Nothing ships · all 12 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.