Happy Triple Threat Thursday.
Here’s one Signal to notice, one thing to Spark growth and one Shift to consider.
This week’s theme: Metrics are training the wrong behavior.
Most leadership teams believe metrics are neutral. They assume dashboards reflect reality.
They don’t.
Metrics shape what people prioritize, protect, and avoid. Over time, teams stop optimizing for outcomes and start optimizing for what makes the numbers look good. The dashboard turns green. Confidence rises. And quietly, the system drifts.
This is why performance often looks strong on the surface while results underneath feel brittle or stalled.
📡 Signal — What’s Changing
Teams are optimizing what gets measured, even when it hurts results
This usually doesn’t show up as a big failure. It shows up as friction you can’t quite explain.
Marketing proudly reports traffic growth, but sales keeps saying the leads feel worse.
Sales celebrates faster closes, but revenue per deal starts drifting down.
Product ships more often, yet support tickets creep up.
Each team is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. They’re responding to the metrics that get reviewed, praised, and questioned every week.
Over time, people learn where the pressure actually is. They learn which numbers matter in meetings and which ones are just “nice to have.” So they adjust. Not maliciously. Practically.
The dashboard stays green. Confidence stays high. Meanwhile, the system underneath starts to bend in ways no one intended.
That’s the shift worth noticing.
Metrics aren’t just reflecting performance anymore. They’re quietly setting priorities, whether leadership meant them to or not.
⚡ Spark — What to Try This Week
Run the “What Does This Reward?” Test
This takes 10 minutes.
Pick one metric that’s consistently green. Something leadership feels good about.
Ask three questions, in order:
What behavior does this metric reward day to day?
What behavior does it quietly discourage?
What outcome does leadership believe this metric represents?
Now compare answers.
If the rewarded behavior and the intended outcome don’t match, the metric is training the wrong behavior, even if it’s technically accurate.
You don’t need to remove the metric yet. Just see it clearly.
If the behavior and the outcome don’t match, the metric is working against you.
🔄 Shift — How to Rethink It
Metrics don’t just describe performance. They quietly shape it.
Most leaders treat metrics as information. Something to look at after the work is done.
What’s easy to miss is how those same metrics get used in real life. In reviews. In standups. In planning conversations. In what gets praised or questioned.
That’s where the influence shows up.
People don’t change behavior because a metric exists. They change behavior because it’s the thing that gets attention when tradeoffs have to be made. Over time, teams learn which numbers matter most and adjust accordingly, often without anyone explicitly telling them to.
The shift isn’t that leaders are intentionally using metrics to direct behavior. It’s that metrics end up doing that work anyway.
Once you see that, the question changes.
It’s no longer “Is this metric accurate?”
It’s “What does this metric push people to do when things get messy?”
A metric can be accurate and still be harmful.
📚 Worth A Look
🔗 The hidden cost of vanity metrics in product analytics
Explains how metrics that look impressive on dashboards, like surface numbers that “feel good,” can actually distract teams from real value and meaningful progress.
🔗 Pitfalls of poor metrics: measuring what matters
A recent analysis highlights how poorly chosen or misused metrics can mislead organizations, incentivize the wrong behaviors, and drain valuable resources without improving actual outcomes.
🔗 IndexBox: Overreliance on KPIs can mislead
A December 2025 industry article reports that leaders are warning about KPIs obscuring true performance rather than illuminating it, showing how metrics can create false confidence if not carefully designed.
📈 TL;DR
Most companies don’t realize they’re doing well on the dashboard while training behavior that weakens results underneath.
📈 One Question
Which metric would your team defend even if it stopped correlating with outcomes?
Thanks for reading Triple Threat. See you next Thursday with another Signal, Spark, and Shift.
— Alexandria Ohlinger
p.s. If this helped you think sharper or move faster, share it with someone who builds the way you do. And if you want more practical insight between issues, connect with me on LinkedIn.