Metrics Gone Wrong -- How Companies Are Optimizing The Wrong Way

Peter Drucker famously said "what gets measured gets managed." This mantra has been embraced by companies worldwide and particularly in Silicon Valley. Firms are trying to optimize their their sales calls, their supply chain, their HR department and anything else they can put a number on. But with the rush to measure everything, many companies don't think about what the path to optimization looks like and whether their metrics match their goals. One recent example is Twitter's new feed algorithm which was supposed to surface the most relevant tweets rather than use the standard timeline.