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Clickbaity title submission. The actual title of the blog post is "How to avoid KPI psychosis in your organization?" and it talks about why blindly following KP

by kriro 3y ago

Clickbaity title submission. The actual title of the blog post is "How to avoid KPI psychosis in your organization?" and it talks about why blindly following KPI can be bad, that humans are good at hacking numbers etc. and basically says "don't use them blindly". It's also framing it in the context of tech businesses not all businesses in general. So not sure how to jump from that post to the submitted title of "Why KPIs are destroying businesses". KPI can be very useful as sanity checks and it also varies quite a bit by industry if and when it makes sense to lean more of them. Anything involving physical goods/supply chains usually benefits greatly from having good KPI in place. Same for financial information. The "I" stands for indicator, I think it's usually a good idea to set up some KPI with boundaries and alerts to resteer the ship if anything goes badly off the path (cash flow indicators for finance for example).

_8j50 3y ago
Basically McNamara fallacy but more subject specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy The KPI is a measurement tool not a goal. If you run a race, your goal should not be to beat ussain bolt's record, your goal should be winning with your best possible time which could or could not be much better than usain's. It is your coach who is supposed to measure you and observe how you are running and training and help you adjust that based on his/her expertise on the subject that is supposed to use usain's record as a measuing stick as they help you adjust and adapt to break the record.
- Karellen 3y ago
  Cool. I'd not seen that one before. I was going to link to Goodhart's Law, but the McNamara fallacy seems broader and more interesting. Thanks.
- staplung 3y ago
  This. Step 1: measure only that which can be easily measured Step 2: ignore what can't be easily measured Step 3: assume that which cannot be easily measured is unimportant Step 4: assume that which cannot be easily measured is not even real Plus yeah, also Goodwin's Law.

by kriro 3y ago

_8j50 3y ago

Basically McNamara fallacy but more subject specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy The KPI is a measurement tool not a goal. If you run a race, your goal should not be to beat ussain bolt's record, your goal should be winning with your best possible time which could or could not be much better than usain's. It is your coach who is supposed to measure you and observe how you are running and training and help you adjust that based on his/her expertise on the subject that is supposed to use usain's record as a measuing stick as they help you adjust and adapt to break the record.

Karellen 3y ago
Cool. I'd not seen that one before. I was going to link to Goodhart's Law, but the McNamara fallacy seems broader and more interesting. Thanks.
staplung 3y ago
This. Step 1: measure only that which can be easily measured Step 2: ignore what can't be easily measured Step 3: assume that which cannot be easily measured is unimportant Step 4: assume that which cannot be easily measured is not even real Plus yeah, also Goodwin's Law.