❗️Longread: Goodhart's Law — any observed statistical regularity will collapse once pressure is applied to control it. In simple words: "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric."

If a nail factory is given a KPI based on the number of nails produced, the factory will start producing millions of tiny nails. On the other hand, if the KPI is changed to measure efficiency by total weight, the factory will produce one giant, heavy nail weighing a ton. In both cases, the formal indicator (metric) will be perfectly met, but the real business goal of producing useful fasteners will fail.

You might say, that can't happen! To that, I'll tell you a real story.

January 27, 1994, a football match between the national teams of Barbados and Grenada in the qualifying tournament for the Caribbean Cup. The tournament organizers introduced an experimental rule: each match must have a winner, and a "golden goal" in extra time counted as two.

Barbados needed to win by a margin of at least 2 goals to advance from the group. Any other outcome would put Grenada through.

In the 83rd minute, Barbados led 2:0, but Grenada scored (making it 2:1). Time was running out, and Barbados couldn't score against Grenada's strong defense in regular time.

Barbados players realized that if they drew and took the match into overtime, under the "golden goal counts as two" rule, they would only need to score one goal in the extra 30 minutes to achieve the required +2 margin. In the 87th minute, they deliberately scored an own goal, making it 2:2.

Grenada players figured out what was happening. A 2:3 loss (losing by one goal) would still put them through. So in the last 3 minutes, Grenada tried to score into either goal — either to win 3:2 or to score an own goal (2:3). Barbados heroically defended both their own and the opponent's goal.

The match went into overtime, Barbados scored a golden goal, and the game officially ended 4:2 in their favor.

The video clearly shows the timeline and chaos of that match, demonstrating how an attempt to artificially stimulate a desired metric created a loophole that completely perverted the original goal.

P.S. Next time I'll tell you about the cobra effect.

📲 MAX 👮‍♂️ VK ☺️DZEN 🙃 SETKA ✈️ TG #history #kpi #okr #motivation