“Dysfunctional Consequences of Performance Measurements.” At a job-placement firm, staffers were evaluated on the number of interviews they conducted, which motivated them to run through the meetings as quickly as possible, without spending much time actually helping their clients find jobs. At a federal law enforcement agency, investigators given monthly performance quotas were found to pick easy cases at the end of the month rather than the most urgent ones. And at a factory, focusing on production metrics led supervisors to neglect maintenance and repairs, setting up future catastrophe.
...more