Human beings are devious and will always achieve their targets, but not normally in the way that those who set the targets intended.

W. Edwards Deming said that if we set targets then they will always be achieved, even if doing so destroys the organisation. This is happening with the NHS and education.

Nurses and teachers are getting progressively unable to provide the services for which they were trained because their effective time is being eroded by the need to demonstrate that targets and metrics are being met.

Another example is from a recent John Seddon book where he notes an increasing pressure on police forces to respond to nationally set performance measures. The officers explained how what used to be classified as a domestic disturbance between husband and wife was now described as two assaults, both solved, no further action required. It looks great for the metrics but is it measuring the effectiveness of the police force?

Human beings are devious and will always achieve their targets, but not normally in the way that those who set the targets intended. In some cases, as Deming noted, the resulting behaviour is completely destructive. Metrics applied in this way will always run the risk of inadvertently creating this destructive behaviour.

Instead of trying to guess what will be the right thing to measure and what the correct benchmark might be, try asking the workforce what they think. Ask what is important to them. How do they know when they have done a good job? Then allow them to measure themselves.

Metrics set by managers are almost never achieved. Set by the workforce they are almost always achieved and the targets set by the workforce for themselves exceed the most optimistic estimates of performance made by managers by a factor of 2 or 3.

Setting metrics for other people is almost always destructive. Letting people set their own improves performance by orders of magnitude.