Why do KPIs lose effectiveness over time?

The correct answer is C. People game them. KPIs lose effectiveness primarily because people game them - once employees know what's being measured, they optimize their behavior to hit the metric rather than achieve the underlying goal (e.g., a call center rep rushing calls to boost "calls handled per hour" while ignoring…

Agile Project Management in Practice

Question

Options

AData decays
BSystems change
CPeople game them
DTools evolve

How the community answered

(27 responses)

A
7% (2)
B
4% (1)
C
85% (23)
D
4% (1)

Explanation

KPIs lose effectiveness primarily because people game them - once employees know what's being measured, they optimize their behavior to hit the metric rather than achieve the underlying goal (e.g., a call center rep rushing calls to boost "calls handled per hour" while ignoring customer satisfaction). This is known as Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

The distractors are plausible but secondary: Data decaying (A) is a data quality issue, not an inherent flaw in KPI design. Systems changing (B) might make a KPI irrelevant, but the metric doesn't lose effectiveness from gaming. Tools evolving (D) describes infrastructure change, not the behavioral dynamic that undermines measurement integrity.

Memory tip: Think of the phrase "Hit the number, miss the point" - when people know the KPI, they hit the number while missing the actual goal. That's why C (gaming) is the core reason KPIs fail.

Topics

#KPIs#gaming metrics#measurement effectiveness#behavioral economics

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