Preventing Metric Gaming

Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Every metric system is gameable. If you measure call volume, reps make short, valueless calls. If you measure MQLs, marketing lowers the qualification bar. If you measure NPS, support teams cherry-pick which customers get surveyed. Anti-gaming design uses paired metrics that prevent optimization of one at the expense of the other. Call volume paired with conversion rate. MQL count paired with MQL-to-opportunity rate. NPS paired with response rate. The paired metric catches the gaming behavior. If call volume goes up but conversion goes down, the gaming is visible. If MQLs go up but the conversion rate drops, the lowered bar is exposed.