In his book, The Tyranny of Metrics (2018), Jerry Muller offers a critical analysis of the overuse of KPIs across a range of public and commercial sectors. Chapter 1 gives a summary of the this analysis and the book as a whole covers examples from policing, healthcare and transportation; as well as commercial examples of the misuse of KPIs.

Perhaps the obvious conclusion is that an obsession with KPIs crowds out any qualitative evidence of the positive and maybe negative impacts of a project, process or intervention.

But equally important is that KPIs-only has a feedback on which types of people become to be seen as effective managers, and it isn’t a good story. Muller shows that relying on KPIs alone to determine effectiveness tends to drive out managers who show creativity and talent, and promotes unhealthy gaming behaviours instead.

He doesn’t say that KPIs have no place at all, but they are not the predominant sign of excellence or effectiveness.