You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so we measure everything and improve nothing.
Metrics promise improvement, but abundance breeds confusion. A reflection on how over-measurement turns focus into noise and progress into paralysis.
In the pursuit of certainty, we traded clarity for calibration.
The Moment of Inspiration
It began, as many modern metrics discussions do, with good intent.
A leadership meeting focused on accountability:
“We need to track this.”
“We should measure that.”
“What gets measured gets managed.”
By the end, the list of KPIs had multiplied into a forest of numbers—each justifiable, none truly actionable.