"You cannot manage anything you cannot measure" True or False

There was an interesting interview on the Today programme on Radio 4 yesterday morning with reference to NHS care for the elderly. The interviewee made the point that society doesn't value anything that we cannot count and concluded that this was the reason we seem to be moving backwards in progress in many fields.

Many managers say "you cannot manage anything you cannot measure" it became a cliche particularly around six sigma.

I think that this is not as true as many people think; because instinct for doing the right thing is not based on randomness but application of experience and patterns, the latter being quite difficult and complex to model mathematically