KPIs

August 30, 2023 — ~tonm

We live in a world where we collect data about everything. Think of the data we track on our navigation, our customer behavior, our health, and our company/team/individual performance. Unfortunately, this abundance of data led to a growing prevalence of KPI psychosis in technology companies. KPI psychosis is a state of mind where a company has dysfunctional contact with its reality and makes decisions only based on numbers. This results in perverse motivation in many organizations, where people have to choose between doing their job well (broader reality) or getting promoted for meeting the KPIs (tunnel vision).