[Loughla]

You have to realize that if you set a measure, you're actually setting a goal for your employees. There is no such thing as a meaningless metric; why else would you measure it?

No amount of "this isn't used for anything" will change that. It's inherent in human nature in the 21st century to believe any and all metrics will be used against them, and therefore must be gamed.

It's why you also have to set UNBELIEVABLY clear goals and have incentives tied to those goals. Incentives meaning money. If you want to measure things, measure them. But have clear, consistent, and meaningful goals tied to bonuses or something if you want a thing done correctly.

[Freedom2]

I wonder if this should be codified as a rule of thumb, or an unofficial "law"? One perhaps we can reference easily among our peers.

[aeve890]

You mean like Goodhart's Law? (Unless you're being sarcastic)

[Loughla]

That's close but not quite.

That says that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

My argument is that in the 21st century, a time of great data use without deep understanding, any measure at all will inherently become a goal to be gamed.

[chillfox]

I worked at a place that argued that nobody would game the metrics because it would be wrong and they never stated what the metrics were… while I was gaming the metrics and they were praising me for being one of the best on the team.

It was an unreal experience.

[AlexeyBelov]

How did you realize what the metrics were?

[4yfr]

Kinda.

The answer is simpler on the surface: focus.

Generally the problem is the larger the firm’s operations, the harder it is to focus.

Apple is the only firm that has done well on this consistently and doesn’t have a huge grave yard of failures to show for it.

[estearum]

Are you saying what people are hoping to achieve with stupid goals? Because yeah, obviously. But the point is that they're stupid, so they don't achieve that, and that failure is 100% knowable in most scenarios.

[butlike]

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