Description
We live in an era of “metric fixation”: the belief that the only path to success is to quantify human performance, publicise the results, and reward people based on the numbers. From surgical scorecards to standardised testing and corporate KPIs, we have traded professional judgment for a spreadsheet. In this powerful and accessible book, historian Jerry Muller uncovers the hidden damage of this trend, showing how the zeal for “scientific rigour” often produces the exact opposite of its intended result.
Muller provides a cross-disciplinary autopsy of the tyranny, explaining why paying for measured performance backfires, why metrics can actually increase mortality rates in hospitals, and how the time spent “reporting” on work is cannibalising the time spent actually doing it. This is not an anti-data manifesto, but a call for a return to wisdom, experience, and the understanding that the most important things in life are often the hardest to measure.
Muller’s book is the definitive case study of Goodhart’s law in action. He demonstrates that as soon as you reward people for hitting a specific number, they stop focusing on the goal and start focusing on the metric. Surgeons might refuse high-risk patients to keep their “success rate” high; teachers might “teach to the test” while failing to educate; police officers might focus on easy-to-solve petty crimes to meet arrest quotas.
This book is the essential filter for organisational health. It proves that when you elevate a metric to a target, you aren’t improving performance; you are simply incentivising people to game the system. It is the ultimate guide to recognising when the 90% of data-crud is being used to hide a 10% decline in actual quality.
