When Hitting the Biz Target Still Means Missing the Point
Goodhart’s Law. Do you know it? “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Essentially, when executives or managers turn tactical activity metrics into targets, those measurements stop providing useful information.
I believe this happens the moment we start measuring our own business activities as the final metric instead of the client’s actual progress towards their value delivery in concert with our products/services. Because once the measure reflects the client’s progress through our work with/for them, the whole tone of the work shifts. The conversation moves away from internal activity tracking and toward helping the client make their next right decision.
For me, the value sits in aligning “what’s in it for the client?” with “what’s in it for our business?”, since form follows function. If we want to keep internal metrics from becoming the thing we serve, then we have to anchor our priorities in the outcomes the client actually cares about. That is what creates clarity with alignment. It also keeps us out of the Goodhart’s Law trap that shows up when teams start obsessing over internal measures that don’t mean much to the client.
And if this were simple, it would be automated by now. It is not because it depends on a few things that are messy, human, and impossible to fake.
First, we need real relational equity with the client. Without it, we’re guessing. We might have usage data or a story from one conversation, but we miss the context that says, “this matters because…”.
Second, we need internal clarity with alignment across Product, Marketing, Sales, Support, and Implementation. If each team is optimizing for its own definition of success, the client will inevitably feel the gaps long before we see them.
And third, we need the ability to connect the quantitative outcomes the client defines with the qualitative feedback they give us. The numbers show part of the story; their words show the rest. We need both if we want to understand the progress they’re actually trying to make and how we are (or are not) helping in that grand endeavor.
This work is not easy. It is communication, coordination, and collaboration through interpretation, all happening more frequently than most teams are used to. But when we get it right, something important happens: the organization stops chasing metrics and starts serving progress. And that is when the work begins to matter in the ways clients feel most.
Do you have Goodhart’s Law happening with your work? I’d enjoy hearing how what I’ve shared here might help you break that pattern.
