[gregshap]

Leadership and management are crafts just like engineering. Goals and KPIs are tools. Most of the time when I've experienced bad Goals or KPIs, the root problem was one of the following.

1)Lack of clear mission/direction at the top level of the organization. This is a 100% necessary condition for good goals & kpis throughout the rest of the org. Otherwise it feels like political battles and favoritism between different people or departments with conflicting goals.

2) Goals & KPIs that are not well mapped from the org's mission or roadmap down to the individuals. Now all the individuals can hit their goals but org fails, or vice versa. This feels like "doing what's right for the company is bad for my performance review."

3) Confusing health KPIs with outcomes or goals. Something like commits per day/month is a great health check, but bad goal, and the benchmark for healthy is totally context dependent. This feels like "She solves the hardest problems but the solutions are very few LOC." Or "he has the most commits because his code is so buggy".