Goodhart’s Law: When measures become goals, they lose their ability to measure.

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

– William Bruce Cameron

A compass is a simple, reliable tool. It points north, guides direction, and keeps wanderers from drifting aimlessly. But imagine if a traveler became so fixated on keeping the compass needle perfectly still that they forgot to look at the terrain. They’d spend their time correcting the instrument instead of moving forward.

That’s Goodhart’s Law in a nutshell: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Metrics are meant to illuminate progress, not dictate it. But somewhere along the path of growth - especially in organizations scaling fast - the compass becomes the journey. The dashboard becomes the destination. And performance starts to revolve around proving the metric, not fulfilling the mission.

When Numbers Start Running the Show

Metrics bring clarity. They offer accountability, focus, and a shared understanding of what “good” looks like. Every healthy organization needs them. But Goodhart’s Law warns that the moment people start optimizing for the metric instead of the meaning behind it, distortion creeps in.

Targets are not neutral. They change behavior. What gets measured gets managed - but sometimes, what gets managed gets manipulated.

This is rarely malicious. It usually starts with good intent: a founder trying to track growth, a manager trying to drive performance, or a board trying to benchmark success. But metrics have gravity. Once they’re public, they pull energy toward themselves. And over time, what was once a tool becomes a trap.

Boeing: When Metrics Overrode Mission

Few examples illustrate this drift more powerfully than Boeing.

For decades, Boeing was an engineer’s company; defined by precision, pride, and a relentless commitment to safety. The name itself carried a quiet weight: it stood for rigor, reliability, and American ingenuity in flight.

But as the company evolved through the 1990s and 2000s, its compass began to shift. Wall Street expectations grew. Shareholder returns became the dominant narrative. The internal dialogue - once about flight stability and engineering excellence, started revolving around production rates, cost per aircraft, and quarterly delivery targets.

These numbers weren’t meaningless; they reflected business efficiency. But slowly, they became the target itself. And in doing so, they replaced the purpose that had defined Boeing for nearly a century.

The tension crystallized in the 737 MAX program. Engineers were under pressure to meet aggressive delivery schedules and cost constraints. Safety testing timelines compressed. Documentation became procedural rather than principle-driven. A metric designed to ensure operational efficiency, delivery cadence-  began eroding the very integrity it was meant to support.

The result, tragically, was catastrophic. Two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 revealed a culture that had drifted from engineering excellence toward metric obedience. Boeing’s compass hadn’t failed - it had been followed too rigidly, without questioning whether it still pointed true north.

Goodhart’s Law wasn’t an abstract idea here. It was operationalized - quietly, systematically - until it became existential.

The Subtle Drift: How It Happens Everywhere

The Boeing case is extreme, but the drift it represents is common. You can see echoes of it in sales teams optimizing for daily quotas instead of long-term relationships, product teams chasing user acquisition over retention, or schools teaching to the test rather than educating for understanding.

Goodhart’s Law shows up when performance review systems favor activity over outcomes, or when companies chase “culture scores” rather than cultural health.

It’s what happens when the metric becomes a mirror - flattering, but detached from reality.

And because the distortion often feels like progress, it’s hard to see from the inside. The dashboards stay green even as trust erodes. The reports look strong even as judgment weakens. Everyone believes they’re doing well - until the system stops moving forward.

From Measurement to Mastery

So how do you counter a law that seems baked into human systems? Not by rejecting metrics - but by reclaiming their purpose.

1. Re-anchor the Metric in Meaning

Metrics should be reflections of value, not substitutes for it. The best organizations revisit their KPIs regularly, asking: What does this number actually represent? What is it leaving out?

2. Design for Judgment, Not Just Measurement

Numbers simplify reality, but they also flatten it. Healthy systems leave room for human context; the judgment, ethics, and interpretation that keep numbers honest.

3. Incentivize Learning, Not Compliance

When metrics become scorecards, people play defensively. When they become feedback loops, people grow. The difference is cultural - it’s about whether leaders treat numbers as verdicts or as starting points for reflection.

4. Reward the Why, Not Just the What

Integrity is not measured by output alone. Recognizing the reasoning behind decisions - not just the result - builds the kind of institutional muscle that resists metric drift.

Metrics Are Maps, Not Territory

In business, as in navigation, maps matter. But the map is not the terrain. The terrain changes - new competitors, new technologies, new expectations - while the map only updates when someone pays attention.

Boeing’s story isn’t just about airplanes or numbers. It’s about what happens when the map stops matching the landscape,  when teams keep following the same coordinates long after the ground beneath them has shifted.

The most resilient organizations aren’t anti-metric. They’re metric-aware. They understand that measurement is a lens, not a law. They use data to guide, not to govern.

When numbers start running the show, leaders have to ask a simple but courageous question: Are we still moving toward our mission, or just toward our metrics?

Conclusion: The Compass and the Journey

A compass is only useful if it helps you find your way. But if you spend all your time staring at it - adjusting, calibrating, proving it’s still right;  you’ll forget to look at the horizon.

Goodhart’s Law reminds us that in business, as in life, the measure is not the meaning. The goal is not to hit the target, but to understand what the target stands for.

Metrics should serve judgment, not replace it. Because when the compass becomes the journey, even the most precise data won’t get you home.