The Measure Trap

Google's PageRank was supposed to measure website quality.

Instead, it created a $80 billion SEO industry.

Larry Page designed PageRank in 1998 to count links like academic citations. More links meant better content. Simple. Within three years, people were buying links, farming links, trading links. The metric became the game.

Thing is...

We don't measure what matters. We matter what we measure.

Klout scored social influence until people started tweeting for points. Hospitals tracked hand-washing compliance until doctors washed hands only near sensors. China measured GDP growth by weight of steel produced. Cities built empty towers.

The pattern? Every benchmark becomes a target. Every target becomes a behavior. Every behavior becomes culture.

Your metrics aren't neutral observers.

They're social viruses, spreading through organizations, rewriting DNA as they replicate. Once you publish that OKR, that KPI, that success metric—it stops measuring reality.

It starts creating it.

The solution isn't better metrics. It's remembering that between every measurement and meaning stands a human who will optimize for looking good rather than being good.

Unless, of course, you measure that too..