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"And tracking towards the wrong goals can be even more counterproductive than failing to track anything at all." The author doesn't seem to recognize that KPIs
by rabidrat 8y ago
"And tracking towards the wrong goals can be even more counterproductive than failing to track anything at all."
The author doesn't seem to recognize that KPIs would be subject to Goodhart's Law. ("When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.")
- tryitnow 8y agoReally? I think Goodhart's Law applies more to complex systems with many, many actors, like whole economies (which is what Goodhart originally applied it to). I am willing to bet that something like "retention" or "net new accounts" are relatively resistant to GL.
- rabidrat 8y agoMaybe in a startup you're right, because it's too small for any kind of metric-hacking to go unnoticed and become systemic. But it definitely happens in larger companies; some might say that making the metric of revenue/profit a target is the source of our capitalistic ills today. https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/31/investing/wells-fargo-fake-accounts/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/31/investing/wells-fargo-fake-...