When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

> Charles Goodhart

Measuring stuff is generally useful. Data, in general, is useful too. If you’re trying to run a big complicated business, it’s definitely a good idea to look at data, see what works, what doesn’t, and make decisions accordingly.

But.

Measurements should never be goals. Ever. Maybe the number of lines of code your programmers are writing is in some way linked to their value as a programmer, but paying or promoting them based on LoC is an obviously terrible idea.

Maybe the number of page views your content writers get for your blog is somehow linked to their value as content writers, but asking them to produce articles that get more page views is also a terrible idea.

Maybe the amount of revenue your sales team generates is indicative of how well your business is doing overall, but incentivising them to make sales at any cost is a terrible idea.

Tell people your goals, and talk about how you can reach the goal together, and use measurements to see how well you are doing. There’s nothing wrong with measurements, until you spend more time looking at the measurements than the goal. It’s easy to become so invested in the measurements that you forget completely what your goal originally was.

Measurements are far more visible, far easier to game, and far more addictive than goals. They can be useful, but be wary of them and the unintended consequences that they can produce.

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between measurements and goals. Usually, you start with a goal and develop the measurements afterwards, but some measurements are now so entrenched that they seem like goals.

Perhaps controversially, all of the following are usually measurements, not goals:

• Revenue
• Profit
• Growth
• Conversion rates
• Lines of code
• Test coverage
• Page views
• Number of sales
• Churn rate
• Number of tickets

And many more. And yet you’ll probably see them listed as goals in meetings, OKRs, KPIs, job descriptions, score cards. Aiming at any of the above is a great way to improve any of the above, at the expense of the goal that you may or may not have explicitly defined somewhere.

Many businesses look at measurements daily or weekly, and goals quarterly or yearly. Maybe everyone would be better off and happier if these were reversed.