Why Most KPIs Are Lies.
Most organizations measure activity. Very few measure understanding.
When The Metric Becomes The Outcome.
What happens the moment a target stops describing reality and starts replacing it.
Businesses love metrics.
- Open rates.
- Response rates.
- Traffic.
- Followers.
- Meetings booked.
- Tasks completed.
The problem isn't the metrics.
The problem is what happens when the metric becomes more important than the outcome.
Activity Is Easy. Truth Is Harder.
Why counting movement is simple and measuring progress almost never is.
A salesperson can hit their outreach target while generating zero revenue.
A marketing team can double website traffic while generating zero customers.
A support team can close tickets faster while making customers angrier.
The KPI says success.
Reality says otherwise.
That's because most KPIs measure activity, not truth.
Activity is easy to count.
Truth is harder.
Truth requires context.
Truth requires outcomes.
Truth requires understanding whether the thing you were trying to accomplish actually happened.
How The Report Replaces The Result.
The slow drift from objective to KPI to meeting to performance theater.
This is where organizations start getting into trouble.
Someone creates a target.
The target becomes a KPI.
The KPI becomes a report.
The report becomes a meeting.
Eventually people start optimizing for the report instead of the result.
The metric survives. The objective dies.
Optimize For Learning, Not Activity.
A small principle behind AA19, and the reason behavior actually changes.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this while building AA19.
One of the principles behind the system is that organizations should not optimize for activity.
They should optimize for learning.
Because learning changes behavior.
And behavior changes outcomes.
A Tale Of Two Teams.
Ten thousand emails versus one thousand. The one that gets smarter wins.
Imagine two teams.
Team A sends 10,000 emails.
Team B sends 1,000 emails.
Traditional KPIs would probably reward Team A.
But what if Team B learned something valuable after every campaign?
- What if each send made the next send better?
- What if their conversion rate improved every month?
- What if they captured the reason people said yes and the reason people said no?
Eventually Team B wins.
Not because they worked harder.
Because they got smarter.
Output Is Counted. Understanding Almost Never Is.
The same pattern shows up everywhere you look.
Organizations track outputs.
Very few track understanding.
How many decisions were made? Easy.
How many decisions improved because of previous decisions? Much harder.
How many tickets were closed? Easy.
How many recurring problems disappeared permanently? Harder.
How many approvals happened? Easy.
How much trust was earned? Harder.
The Metrics That Matter Are The Hardest To Measure.
Closer to reality, further from a dashboard.
The metrics that matter most are usually the hardest to measure.
That doesn't mean they aren't important.
It means they're closer to reality.
The organizations that improve the fastest aren't the ones collecting the most data.
They're the ones turning experience into intelligence.
Remember. Understand. Adjust. Repeat.
The quiet loop that separates a learning organization from a busy one.
- They remember what happened.
- They understand why it happened.
- They adjust.
- Then they do it again.
Movement Is Not Progress.
Why turning experience into intelligence is the only KPI worth defending.
That's why I think most KPIs are lies.
Not because the numbers are wrong.
Because they're often measuring movement while completely missing progress.
And those are not the same thing.
Questions People Ask About KPIs.
Short answers to the questions this piece tends to raise.
- Why are most KPIs misleading?
- Most KPIs measure activity because activity is easy to count. They reward outputs like emails sent, tickets closed, and meetings booked, while ignoring whether the underlying objective actually moved.
- What should organizations measure instead?
- Organizations should measure learning. How many decisions improved because of previous decisions, how many recurring problems disappeared permanently, and how much trust was earned. These signals are harder to capture but closer to reality.
- What is the difference between movement and progress?
- Movement is the activity a team produces. Progress is the change in outcome that activity creates. A team can be in constant motion without producing any progress at all.
- How does AA19 think about KPIs?
- AA19 is designed to optimize for learning rather than activity. Every approval, decision, and outcome is captured so the system gets smarter over time, instead of just doing more of the same thing faster.