Why Your Metrics Might Be Misleading

When an arborist is called to look at the sick tree, the novice arborist will look at the leaves and confirm with the owner that the tree is unwell. They will attempt to fix the leaves.

The more experienced arborist will look at the trunk and branches and try to figure out what is wrong with the tree. They will try to strengthen the branches and trunk.

The experienced arborist won’t even look at the tree at all. An experienced arborist will look at the soil.

What does soil have to do with being a better leader? It all comes down to…

Goodhart’s Law

Goodhart’s Law simply says that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

The novice arborists thinks the leaves of a tree are how to measure whether a tree is healthy or not, and so, they care about the leaves.

The more experienced arborist knows the tree needs a strong trunk so they focus there.

The experienced arborist knows that for a tree to be healthy, it needs to look at the environment in which the tree lives. If this is unhealthy, the tree has no chance.

The Basics

For your team to thrive and hit its goals, it needs to be set up for success.

Does your team have the resources, skills, guidance, and time to achieve its task?

Are there systems and structures set up to support the work required?

The Target

If the team starts to see the measure of success as the target, you might get undesirable outcomes.

The team is not bad, they are figuring out how to give you the most of what you want with the least amount of effort.

This is smart behaviour, however, it requires constant vigil that the measurement of effort is different from the performance target.