TO MEASURE OR NOT TO MEASURE .. THAT IS THE QUESTION

Be careful what you wish for. I recently came across Goodhart's law, which states “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”, the reason being that people will find innovative ways to reach the target whilst circumventing the intent of the target.

Originally used in economics, it can be equally applied to many other fields and it's a good argument for using a Balanced Score Card or Family of Measures for assessing performance, in order to see a more inclusive view. There are many good articles about this law on-line so when you've got a minute, you might like to check them out. It might encourage you to pause for thought before defining some new targets.

Talking of targets, it is equally possible to go too far in the other direction. As an example, there appears to be an opinion in certain areas of public service that setting performance targets is bad practice, the reason given that it might not be possible to reach them. This could well be an evolution of ex President Trump's view that if you don't like the result of a particular metric then just stop measuring it.

Welcome to the strange world of anti-metrics. One where there would be no need to change anything since there's nothing to aim for. No future visions, no score cards, no forecasts, no improvements, in fact no need to do anything new. Let's hope the idea doesn't catch on in the business world !!.