?? Goodhart’s Law: Chasing Targets, Cobras, Chaos & Wild Goose! ??

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The Art of Creating a Problem while solving it!

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Let’s travel back to British colonial India, where one of history’s greatest examples of unintended consequences slithered into existence. The British government in Delhi was dealing with a cobra infestation (the snake kind, not the Excel error kind), and someone thought, “Let’s put a bounty on dead cobras. Problem solved!” What actually happened? Locals started breeding cobras, killing them for cash, and enjoying their newfound prosperity. When the government caught on and stopped the program, the breeders—now with a surplus of worthless cobras—released them. Final score: Cobras 10, British 0. ??????

And thus, Goodhart’s Law came to life. The rule is simple but devastating:

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Why? Because humans, driven by incentives, will find the easiest way to hit the target, even if it destroys the point of having the target in the first place.

When Society Masters the Art of Missing the Point:

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1. Tennis Balls and the Rise of Playground Cartels ??

Schools rewarded students for cleaning up stray tennis balls. A noble goal, right? Until kids realized that throwing more tennis balls onto the playground meant more “clean-up” credit. Suddenly, school grounds looked like Wimbledon after a tornado. Lesson learned: Give kids an incentive, and they’ll turn into Wall Street brokers.

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2. Police: The Heroes of Crime Disappearing Acts ??

Some cities measured police performance by how many crimes were reported. The police’s genius solution? Stop registering crimes. Who needs a safer city when you can have a cleaner spreadsheet?

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3. Pass Everyone! The Education Hack ??

Schools were ranked based on pass rates, so they took the easy way out—pass everyone. Whether students knew algebra or thought “cosine” was a yoga pose didn’t matter. The result? Graduates who couldn’t calculate a tip but flooding the “educated unemployment market!”

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4. Call Centers: How to Win by Hanging Up ??

When call centers started rewarding agents for faster call closures, things went south. The fastest way to “resolve” a call? Hang up. Problem solved—unless you were the customer, stuck yelling “Hello?!” to dead air.

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5. Sales: The Art of Selling to Yourself ??

A company offered huge bonuses for hitting sales targets. Employees figured out that the easiest way to win was to buy products themselves using corporate discounts. They hit their targets, collected bonuses, and sold the products on eBay. Genius? Yes. Sustainable business model? Ummmm!

And here it goes serious :

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1. Students Who Crack the Code but Miss the Lesson ??

When students are measured by exam scores, they figure out how to game the system: memorize past questions, guess multiple-choice answers, and master exam patterns. The only thing they don’t learn? Actual knowledge. Don’t ask them to explain calculus—they think it’s a character from Greek mythology.

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2. Hospitals: Discharge Now, Admit Later ??

Some hospitals measure success by how quickly they discharge patients. The result? Patients are sent home too early, only to return sicker. It’s like rushing someone out of a revolving door and pretending they won’t come back in.

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3. Environmental Metrics: Offshoring Pollution ??

Countries reduce their carbon emissions by outsourcing polluting industries to other nations. “We’re saving the environment,” they claim while quietly dumping the problem on someone else. Out of sight, out of moral responsibility.

My Take: The Thermometer Isn’t the Cure, Genius

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The problem starts when we treat a diagnostic as the destination. Numbers aren’t bad—they’re like thermometers telling us the temperature. But you don’t fix a fever by smashing the thermometer or shoving it in a bowl of ice water to make it read lower. You fix the virus.

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When companies or governments use metrics as shortcuts to success, they’re basically running a cobra farm and hoping no one notices. Want to improve engagement score? Fix the toxic culture, not the survey. Want higher sales? Try creating products customers actually want instead of gaming the system.?

?Now it’s your turn? Do you think many of us are victims of such rotten metrics? What’s the most ridiculous metric you’ve seen at work? Drop them in the comments—because while bad metrics cause headaches, at least they give us good stories.

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