The Metric Trap: When Measuring Work Changes the Work

Organizations often ask IT to make performance visible: faster service, higher quality, lower cost, better customer retention. The request sounds straightforward until a broad business ambition is compressed into a handful of metrics, fields, dashboards, alerts, and targets. This episode examines what happens next. A measure that began as an indicator can become a quota; a proxy can become the objective; and a system designed to report reality can quietly start producing a different reality. Mirko Peters looks at the issue from both sides: why business leaders need metrics they can act on, and why IT must challenge definitions, data quality, collection costs, and unintended incentives. Using a generalized consulting example, the episode shows how teams can confuse what is easy to count with what matters. Listeners will learn how to distinguish outcomes from proxies, document the decisions a metric is meant to support, test for behavioral side effects, and review whether a measurement still serves the business it was created to understand.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-it-it-business--6867401/support.To continue the conversation, follow Mirko Peters on LinkedIn, where more insights and real-world examples are shared from both business and IT perspectives.