The Problem With Hitting Your Numbers

Several years ago I was told, mid-year, not to worry too much about a target we were clearly going to miss.

Then the performance reviews came in. Just the number, and the gap.

That experience reinforces something called Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And the more I've thought about it, the more I've seen it play out everywhere: from nail factories to Pfizer boardrooms to quarterly earnings calls where executives admit they'd kill a profitable project rather than miss a number.

Hitting your targets feels like winning. But sometimes it's the most expensive thing you can do.

This week I'm writing about the hidden cost of how we measure success — and what to do about it.