In complex work, measurement can help us learn and improve—but only if we’re clear about what matters. Too often, targets are imposed without context, creating distortion instead of insight. A better way is to design measures with those doing the work, turning them into tools for shared understanding.
Measures and KPIs
Before you measure anything, you should carefully determine your objectives. What are you trying to achieve, and what is the purpose of making the measurements? Moreover, you should ask, “Are measurements the best way of achieving your goals?”
Why Measure?
There are many reasons why you might measure something:
- To better understand its nature
- To ensure that it meets requirements in some way
- To investigate how it changes over time, to control or improve it
- To gain management support for the activity
- To fulfill a service level agreement or to conform to laws or regulations
- To deliver on a promise or agreement
- To prove to yourself or others that you are not wasting time, i.e., to demonstrate the benefits
- To identify problems and appropriate solutions
- To justify the allocation of resources
- To educate people
- To enforce performance, or because you have been told
- To provide feedback that facilitates learning
Who are you measuring for?
You rarely measure for only one reason or only one stakeholder. Depending on their perspectives, stakeholders will measure you or want to see different measures from you.
For change and KM projects, there are usually two main stakeholders:
- Senior management who wish to see measures based on tangible business outcomes, such as increased revenue or reduced costs
- Employees who want to know “what is in it for them.”
The Dangers
There is nothing inherently wrong with measuring. Measuring is a powerful tool. However, some things are not easy to measure and may even be impossible to measure directly, and the very act of measuring can often cause distortions or unintended side effects. Measures used without due care and consideration can be misleading and dangerous.
Targets
People, teams, and organizations are often given ‘targets’ or KPIs (key performance indicators) by which they are ‘measured.’ For example:
When booking an appointment a patient should not have to wait more than 48 hours to see their doctor.
Such a measure can be recorded and used as a method for ‘measuring’ performance to improve it or simply ensure conformance.
Targets imposed this way are often ‘gamed’ in that people try to meet the target without making any real change. In the example above, a doctor’s surgery can instantly reach its goal by allowing patients to book appointments only for the same day. The target is met at the expense of the objective, i.e., improving patient service. This is a real example from the British National Health Service
that was gamed this way.
Imposing targets on someone to enforce performance rarely works and frequently has the opposite effect.
He was clearly frustrated and exhausted.
He explained that the organization had become dominated by KPIs. There were so many of them, and so much pressure to meet them, that most of his time was spent gathering data, producing reports, and demonstrating compliance. Much of this work carried on late into the evening because his job security depended on hitting the targets.
What troubled him most was not simply the workload. It was that many of the KPIs felt disconnected from the realities of the work itself. He felt trapped in a system where the indicators had become more important than the purpose they were originally meant to serve.
At one point he said something that has stayed with me ever since: “I spend so much time managing the KPIs that I no longer have time to do my actual job properly.”
It struck me then how easily organizations can become consumed by measurement. The metrics begin as tools to support the work, but gradually the work itself becomes subordinated to the metrics.
Targets | Vanguard Consulting
Ensuring ownership of targets
For targets to be valuable, they should be designed and owned by the people who use them, rather than enforced by senior management. Their aim should not be to enforce compliance but to provide a feedback mechanism for learning and improved decision-making.
In the example above of the doctor’s surgery, that would mean rather than the government imposing the target that, the doctors and staff that comprise an individual surgery come together to explore how they might improve their service and then agree on a set of measurements that they can monitor over time to determine if things are getting worse or better, especially in light of initiatives to improve the service. Such measures are unlikely to be ‘gamed’ as the people involved will own them and see them as ‘learning tools.’
Rewards
Rewards Punish. Rewarding people for meeting targets can harm quality, motivation, and pride in work, and exacerbate ‘gaming.’ Rewards are:
- manipulative
- destroy cooperation
- ignore complexity and tend to promote a single solution unquestioningly
- deter risk-taking and creativity
- undermine interest and intrinsic motivation
Punishments
Punishments for failing to meet targets are even worse! In the above example: “Doctors would not allow advance bookings because it meant they increased the possibility that they would not see a patient within the Government’s 48-hour target period and would face a penalty of up to £11,000 as a result!”
Before setting targets or collecting data, we should pause and ask what we’re really trying to learn or improve. We need to involve the people doing the work in shaping the measures. When grounded in purpose, good measures help us reflect, learn, and make better decisions together.
Resources
- LinkedIn Post: KPIs Don’t Improve Decision-Making In Most Organizations by Bernard Marr
- LinkedIn Post: Caution: When KPIs Turn To Poison by Bernard Marr
- Mail Online: A&E patients left in ambulances for up to FIVE hours ‘so trusts can meet government targets’
- BBC News: 48-hour target ‘damaging GP care’
- Telegraph: NHS waiting time targets for ambulances and A&E scrapped
Posts that link to this post
- Why Incentives Undermine Knowledge Sharing A critique of traditional knowledge management thinking
(CC0 1.0)In-person, 7–11 September 2026, Warbrook House, Hampshire, UK
We are living and working in conditions of uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change. Many leadership approaches still rely on control, expertise, and tools that no longer fit the realities people face.
This week-long immersive workshop brings people together to practise Conversational Leadership as a shared, lived experience. It is not a training course but a space to slow down, think together, and explore how leadership emerges through dialogue, responsibility, and real engagement.