We are what we measure

Once the numbers are established, they hold a powerful sway over us all.

Many organizations religiously follow their KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. The idea is that this set of numbers can indicate the health of the business at a glance. If the set of numbers is trending well then the business should celebrate their successes and continue to invest in the product/process/people that allowed them to do that. If the set of numbers is trending poorly then the business should run analyses to determine what went wrong, strategize on next steps, and course correct.

If the metric is number of Weekly Active Users, then the organization will prioritize onboarding more and more users.

If the metric is number of views on a post, then the brand will strive to get as many eyeballs to watch the content.

Herein lies the trap. The goal is to set a high score. I want my organization to succeed so I focus my time to optimize the measures of success. My teammates, managers, and leaders do the same thing. But a blind devotion to improving the quantifiable outcomes (ex. users, views, revenue) might mean we are sacrificing the qualitative outcomes (ex. kindess, trust, helpfulness).