Metricide: When Measurement Kills the Strategy It Should Serve

The telltale signs that measurement no longer helps leaders steer strategy

An hour into the strategy review meeting, an executive leans back in her chair and looks around the room. She asks one question and the room goes silent.

“Are we actually achieving our strategic priorities or are we just really busy? I can’t tell."

Measures abound. Dashboards are full. KPIs are green. Updates sound positive. But no one can honestly say with confidence that the investment of time, effort, and money is producing the results desired and promised from the strategy.

Welcome to Metricide -- the killing of measurement's purpose by tracking everything that moves while proving little that matters.

What happens next is predictable. The silence is quickly filled. Someone points to a chart that moved from red to green and recounts the actions taken. Another person runs through a list of completed activities and initiatives that are “on track." A third shares an anecdotal story of something that went well.

They’ve worked hard and done everything organizations are supposed to do: set direction, execute strategy, measure, report, and review. Still, they can’t answer the question that matters.

This pattern is common. We confuse output with outcome, activity with effectiveness, and motion with progress. We celebrate milestones and hit targets. Still, we can’t show whether we're getting the results intended from our strategy.

What Metricide Is (and Why It Matters)

Metricide™ is a condition in which an organization’s performance measurement efforts do not provide credible evidence of whether strategy is producing the results intended.

Metricide takes different forms. Some organizations measure activities without defining the results that matter. Others define intended results but select measures that do not provide real evidence. Still others have good, sound measures but interpret performance signals incorrectly. In each case, leaders have no valid evidence that strategy is working.

This condition is not due to a lack of data or effort; it frequently exists even in organizations that invest heavily in metrics, dashboards, and formal review processes.

Beneath the strategy and all the plans, reviews, and reports, organizations need to answer two fundamental questions:

Are we achieving the organizational results we want?

How do we know?

When an organization cannot answer those two questions with evidence, strategy loses its power as a system for achieving results. Leaders cannot tell if reported activity reflects real improvement, so decisions rely on opinion, anecdotes, or effort rather than proof. Strategy becomes a story of aspiration the organization tells itself, rather than a disciplined, evidence-based system for delivering results.

When this happens, Metricide shows up in the ways people create, use, and talk about measures and organizational performance.

What Metricide Looks Like: The Telltale Signs

Metricide reveals itself through telltale signs and observable patterns that indicate when the condition is present long before we can recognize or name it.

These telltale signs are not measurement theory problems; they are observable behaviors. When appearing consistently, they indicate that performance measurement is no longer serving its core purpose of providing credible evidence about whether strategy is working and where attention is needed.

Telltale Signs in the KPIs Themselves

• KPIs track activity, workload, initiatives and output but provide little or no evidence that internal results and the external outcomes they should enable are improving.

• The number of measures grows without clear purpose or prioritization - “We’re not sure what will be discussed or asked so we track all these just in case.”

• Performance measures change with personnel and leadership, even when strategy remains unchanged.

Telltale Signs in How Measures Are Developed

• Different teams use different approaches and methodologies reflecting the absence of an organization-wide performance measurement capability.

• Measures are designed by people who were not part of the strategy discussions and are left guessing what success is really supposed to look like.

• Teams hunt for “leading indicators” without first establishing the causal logic between internal results and desired outcomes.

• KPIs are developed by brainstorming and internet searches.

Telltale Signs in How KPIs Are Used

• Performance charts and dashboards are presented in strategy reviews, but performance information is largely unused throughout the organization.

• Leaders distrust the performance data, dismiss reports, or demand alternative views when the performance shown doesn’t match expectations.

• When performance falls short, energy shifts from understanding and learning to defensive explanation.

Telltale Signs in Strategy Review Meetings

• Leaders ask strategic questions but receive responses filled with operational detail, ·       limiting understanding and insight at the level required to steer strategy.

• Performance results are routinely misinterpreted: normal variation triggers unnecessary explanations and corrective actions, while genuine changes in performance go unseen beneath the noise.

• Teams present different answers to the same question, creating confusion about what performance is and if it is really improving.

• Review meetings morph into reporting rituals, where project updates displace strategic discussion and the unspoken objective becomes getting through the meeting unscathed without additional actions.

Metricide Erodes Strategy and Quietly Undermines Execution

These telltale signs point to an issue deeper than poor KPIs or bad dashboards. They reveal a breakdown in how strategy is translated into the intended results, credible evidence, and learning required to steer execution. Without that translation, strategy becomes abstract, execution becomes activity-driven, and measurement loses its purpose.

Metricide is not a data or dashboard problem. It exists even in organizations using modern analytics. The issue is not visibility, but how organizational performance is understood, evidenced, and interpreted.

Nor is Metricide a failure of effort. It reflects performance measurement approaches that were not designed to prove whether strategic results are improving or support strategic learning or evidence-based decisions.

So how do you know if this is happening in your organization? Consider the following three questions.

1. Can your leadership team answer whether strategy is working, using evidence instead of anecdotes?

2. Do your strategy reviews provide evidence of strategic results or characterize organizational activity?

3. Which matters more in your organization: dashboards that look professional, or evidence that proves you're achieving what was promised?

Breaking Free from Metricide

Breaking free from Metricide requires more than better dashboards.

Metricide is not caused by a lack of effort, data, or technology. It is the result of how we think about organizational performance and how that thinking gets embedded into the systems we design and reinforce.

Breaking free starts when leaders insist that strategy, however developed and written, be accompanied by clear intended results and relevant performance measures as evidence. Activities, plans, and status updates no longer substitute for performance.

Organizations that break free from Metricide treat performance measurement as an organizational capability, deliberately designed to produce credible evidence - not activity reports, status updates, or green dashboards. That capability is built using a proven methodology and reinforced by disciplined leadership practice throughout the organization.

Only then can leaders know whether the organization is achieving its intended results — or just really busy.

Note: Metricide™ is a term coined to describe the misuse and overuse of metrics in organizations that strip away relevance and meaning, undermining their value and usefulness.

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Brook Rolter is the Managing Director and Founder of Rolter Associates a consultancy providing management, strategy, organization development consulting, and strategic facilitation services to help organizations integrate strategy, performance, and management practices and improve organizational performance.

Contact Brook by phone or text at 703-628-0340 or by email..