One of my working theories is that all the horror stories about data and incentives are due to lack of exposure to W. Edwards Deming and his ilk.
That, to be clear, includes me.
Conversation
I mean, look at this! From Understanding Variation, by Donald Wheeler:
“When people are pressured to meet a target value there are three ways they can proceed
1. They can work to improve the system
2. They can distort the system
3. Or they can distort the data”
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This is way more useful than pithy Goodhart’s Law, which goes “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” — which is great, but what do you DO about it?
Breaking it down to 3 things allows you to target each behaviour separately.
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Yeah I’ve read that, and it’s great at categorisation, but the suggested solutions are so useless! It’s so bad; it’s clear that the authors have never grappled with this in an operational capacity or tried to apply it in a real world situation.