Time & Perspective Quote by John Hutton

Targets are the most seductive kind of bureaucratic promise: they make messy human work look like an engineering problem. John Hutton’s line leans hard on that seduction, presenting “properly constructed and applied” targets as both the engine of “past successes” and the insurance policy for “progress into the future.” It’s managerial reassurance disguised as inevitability.

The specific intent is defensive and programmatic at once. Hutton isn’t just endorsing measurement; he’s trying to pre-empt the common critique that targets distort priorities. By inserting the careful qualifier “properly,” he signals awareness of the horror stories (gaming the metrics, teaching to the test, hospital wait-time shuffling) while keeping the core tool intact. The phrase does a lot of political work: any failure can be blamed on improper construction, not on the idea of targets itself.

Subtextually, the quote marks a shift in what counts as legitimacy in public services. Success isn’t framed as trust, professional judgment, or democratic deliberation; it’s framed as performance that can be specified, tracked, and audited. “Sustaining progress” implies a treadmill: services must constantly prove they’re improving, not merely functioning well. That’s a modern governance reflex born from New Public Management and its descendants, where accountability is translated into numbers that travel neatly through reports, dashboards, and media narratives.

Context matters because “across public services” is expansive and slightly ominous. It suggests a one-size discipline applied to schools, hospitals, and beyond. The promise is coherence and momentum. The risk, left unspoken, is that what gets counted becomes what gets done.