Except for the Friday I drove myself to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, I never missed a day of work for 25 years.
And I don’t even count that as a missed day because I only left work at lunchtime. It was just my luck my appendix waited until Friday afternoon, and I was back to work on Monday.
I confess, I never met a metric I didn’t immediately want to dominate. It took me a long time to realize how much chasing success cost me.
I still use metrics in my life, but I’m much more deliberate about which ones I choose. Here’s why.
Metrics Are Fantastic Tools … to Manipulate People
You’ve probably heard this saying: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Makes perfect sense, if what you want to do is manage people.
I’ll propose a variation, which is “If you can measure it, people will focus on it.” That may not sound profound, so let’s add this modifier “… to the exclusion of everything else.”
My thesis for you is this: your primary focus in your life and at work should be on looking behind the metrics that are presented to you by others.