It goes “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” How does that work in practice?
In: Other
Let’s say your PE teacher asked to you walk laps around the gym. Great, everyone’s out walking.
Now the teacher wants to make sure everyone is putting in a minimum distance, so they count each persons lap. Still okay.
Let’s pretend the teacher gave everyone a step counter and records both laps and steps. Now, they know 5 laps is the same as 1000 steps for most students in the class.
If the teacher wants to do other things during class and gives each student a device and says they can go change clothes after they hand the decide back in with 1000 steps on it, surely that will accomplish the same thing, right?
Nope! Yes, some people would still walk around the gym as the teach intended. Other people would hold the device in their hand and shake it up and down repeatedly to make the counter count as fast as possible.
These students have achieved their metric, but they haven’t actually walked anywhere. The “step” count metric has become meaningless.
Latest Answers