Goodhart's Law

The operational manifestation of the principle that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure because teams optimise for the metric rather than the underlying performance it was designed to represent.

In operations, Goodhart’s Law produces metrics that improve on the dashboard while the reality they were designed to track deteriorates. Ticket closure rates increase as agents close tickets without resolution and on-time delivery rates improve as the delivery window is extended rather than the actual improvement in logistics performance.

Every metric in an operations dashboard should be audited for Goodhart’s Law vulnerability before it is published to a leadership audience.