Formerly: Targets do more harm than good
The endless quest to quantify productivity can go terribly wrong when targets and metrics are set without deeper thought. Driving millions of pageviews is worthless if the content fails to deliver an impactful message and writing hundreds of lines of code means nothing if it isn’t efficient.
Targets and metrics themselves aren't inherently bad, but should serve their true purpose: to motivate and align. When creating targets and metrics, consider these economic principles
- 📝Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
- 📝Campbell's Law: The more a metric is used, the more likely it is to “corrupt the process it is intended to monitor.”
Efficiency isn’t just output; it is the value of what is produced. Targets should not be established without thinking deeply about what is being measured, and why it matters.