What gets measured, gets managed. What gets managed, gets accomplished.
The first sentence comes from someone famous – I think Peter Drucker. The second sentence is what I came up with.
KPI or key performance indicators, are metrics that organizations use to keep their employees on their toes. It also creates, supposedly healthy, competition among coworkers. KPI is a necessary evil. Companies have the growth mindset and KPI is easy to monitor and report to shareholder, who in turn decide to continue buying shares or not.
Employees should learn to live with KPI’s. Stay on top of them and push back of they start to consume your creativity.
The drawback to KPI is that you start to lose sight of the forest for the trees. You are not sharpening the saw. You can not be as creative as you once were.
Like all other things, there is a delicate balance here and companies can’t overlook this fact. Big data and the AI tend mean KPI’s are not going away. We evolve with this and find a balance.