'We all figured out pretty quickly how to game the KPI system': Boss says "Hit KPIs" employees do... but business suffers

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Mar 29, 2023 9:00 AM EDT

Chasing a singular metric with reckless abandon will never be good for your business and, depending on which singular metric you choose to chase, can have a range of disastrous results.

Let's go with an example: Imagine you work for a company that services multiple clients on an ongoing contract basis. The price of each contract is determined based on the time it will take a technician to attend the site and carry out routine checks on scheduled maintenance—with this being estimated based on the size of the site and the serviceable features present.

Your salesman, the sole person responsible for drawing up and determining the price of these contracts, has one singular KPI, performance metric, and commission incentive: the number of new clients signed. They're doing a fantastic job, smashing figures for new contracts and bringing you a ton of new business.

Here's the problem: Mr. Salesman is knocking his sales figures out of the park, but he has been doing it by undervaluing every site to give the most "competitive" price possible—and there's no way the people doing the work can possibly do the work in the effective time they have been allotted.

Moreover, even the safe estimate for the time needed to complete the work was drafted up by someone completely removed from the actual process involved with attending the site. In doing their calculations, they forgot to account for things like driving to the site, being permitted access to the site, and following on-site procedures—heck, they even forgot to account for the time the technicians need to complete the necessary paperwork. Their time estimate was effectively the time a technician would spend if they teleported to each location like they had a hyperdrive attached to their vehicle.

Now, it will be some time before all of this comes to a head—months, years even. In that time, our dear friend Mr. Salesman will have signed hundreds, maybe thousands of these contracts. Slowly, the service delivery team is falling further and further behind; technicians and middle managers are making noise about a growing issue, but the only feedback they receive is to "Do more, faster." despite this not being humanly possible without cutting dangerous corners.

Clients are getting understandably upset about their lack of agreed-upon service; they begin seeking to cancel their contacts. with management blaming the service delivery team for these losses. Meanwhile—Mr. Salesman is still signing new contracts like crazy as the business tries to keep their number of clients up.

Right before everything goes to custard, Mr. Salesman jumps ship with his comfortable commission figures in his pocket and still none of the blame, moving on to the next company to do the same thing. The company is floundering and beginning to sink, with the bigwigs still confused about what has caused things to go so far sideways… (It must be those lazy, no-good technicians mucking everything up!)

This same old song and dance will unfold until the end of time, with the bigwigs still being none-the-wiser as to the source of their failure. This week I came across a story that inspired this post on Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit. (A popular sub that regular readers will be no stranger to where these types of stories emerge often.) Redditor u/letowyn shared this story with a warm reception from readers who responded in the comments.

Keep reading to see some screenshots of this thread below; see the original Reddit thread by following the attribution links. For more, check out this demanding manager who demander a worker to cover a shift on their day off.

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via Image: John Schnobrich
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'We all figured out pretty quickly how to game the KPI system': Boss says "Hit KPIs" employees do... but business suffers

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