Metrics for metrics sake

One point of pain in my professional career is what I view as blind adherence to defined (by whom, I don’t know) metrics that, it is suspected, measure the progress and success of a business. If the goal of these measurements is to track the needle movement (i.e. General health) of the business, then I think most of these measurements/kpi’s are “good enough.”

The problem is that people worship these as false idols, where adherance to the metrics dulls the senses and causes teams to stray from the path of what is right for the customer and, long-term, what is right for the business.

People need to remember that metrics are indicators (a meaning that is lost on many), not the answer in and of themselves. As one wise father of a classmate once said (and I paraphrase), “kpi’s are measurements to live by, not measurements to die by.”