Measures, targets, and the gap where the heart lives

Cool stuff from François Lavallé. I don’t think I can ever tire from hear Goodhart’s Law expressed in a multitude of different ways, and it’s especially nice hearing it from someone who has run his own business and fell into the trap of running it to achieve KPIs rather than use KPIs to evaluate, well, key performance indicators. Head over to his post to learn more with a bonus history about about Lord Kelvin.

Another great quote in François’ post comes from Mario Bagioli, if Wikipedia is correct, and it states: “when a feature of the economy is picked as an indicator of the economy, then it inexorably ceases to function as that indicator because people start to game it.” I was reminded of this when I read this piece by Simon Enoch in Policy Alternatives about why the Saskatchewan government won’t adopt rent controls despite rent affordability being a massive issue. The post debunks the typical talking points about rent control: that it doesn’t work, that it suppresses affordability and so on. Those talking points often hinge on this very point, that features of the economy are picked as indicators of activity, and worse, as evidence of policy failure. What it doesn’t do is answer its own question, but then expecting the Saskatchewan Party to have a sensible set of evidence-based social policies that benefit poor and marginalized folks is, let’s say, optimistic.

Data matters, both as a portal to the unknown and as a marker of what has been. So two links today to wrap up on, which activate my heart. Patti Digh gets some test results that put her in a liminal space, and Peter Rukavina muses on the scars he carries. Wishing the best for both and for all of us who are discovering that the gap between what we want our bodies to do and what they are actually doing grows a little more every year.