Measuring Your Way to Success

“That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.”

This concept came to be widely known as Pearson’s Law. While it is frequently attributed to the English mathematician and statistician Karl Pearson, it was actually formulated as a business maxim by Thomas S. Monson. It serves as a powerful rule of thumb, but it is not a scientific law. It does not hold true in every scenario the way the law of gravity or the law of conservation of energy does.

When we measure, we know exactly where we stand with respect to our objectives. Metrics inform us whether we are falling short, staying on track, or overshooting our goals. They guide our next steps toward success.

Without measurement, any accomplishment—no matter how insignificant—can be claimed as a success. “Busywork” can easily pass as productive work. Even when measurable improvement is impossible, deliverables can serve as useful countable milestones.

When objective measures of performance are absent, "performance or productivity theater"—staged behaviours, meetings, or processes that mimic productivity without accomplishing anything—thrives. In these environments, AIDS (As If Doing Something) spreads like a real contagion.

Available data highlights the scale of this issue. According to a Visier Performance Report (opens in a new tab), 43 percent of employees spend more than 10 hours a week on performative tasks, and 83 percent of full-time workers admit to participating in productivity theater. Furthermore, a Software Finder study highlighted by Forbes (opens in a new tab) revealed that while 66 percent of regular employees have engaged in fake productivity (also called fauxductivity), nearly 73 percent of middle managers admit to doing exactly the same.

Without objective performance measures, nepotism thrives unchecked. Praise, awards, and promotions can be distributed on an unmeasurable basis under the shield of plausible deniability. The illusion of competence is easily conjured up, and due to the lack of a measurable baseline, advocating for true accountability has no solid ground to stand on.

Leaders and supervisors routinely look for proxy performance indicators when they struggle to measure the actual quality or impact of their team’s work. Proxies like rapid email response times, staying late at the office, and verbosity in meetings quickly take the place of real performance measures.

What is Measured and Reported Improves Exponentially

The second part of the business maxim is arguably the more powerful: What is measured and reported improves exponentially.

Note the distinction—it does not merely improve, nor does it improve arithmetically; it improves exponentially. This exponential acceleration occurs primarily because reporting introduces accountability. When progress is made transparently public, everyone responsible—whether primary or secondary—is compelled to make improvements.

This aligns perfectly with the Hawthorne Effect, a psychological phenomenon where people naturally modify their behavior when they know they are being observed. When measurable indicators of progress are public and transparent, a lack of progress can no longer be hidden or excused. While a shortfall might be easily justified to one or two people, especially if they lack authority or information, it cannot be hidden from an entire group. As the famous saying widely attributed to Abraham Lincoln notes, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Pearson’s Law applies just as powerfully to organizations as it does to individuals. Data shows that organizations leveraging objective, measurable performance indicators improve significantly faster than those relying purely on intuition or unmeasured progress. When organizational metrics are reported and shared openly, it sparks a healthy pressure to improve and outperform competitors, paving the way for exponential growth.

I witnessed the raw power of Pearson's Law earlier in my career as a public servant. Our team audited and assisted government agencies and local government units (LGUs) to improve their operational productivity. An inter-agency performance auditing group scored these participating entities, categorized them by performance level (e.g., High Performing, Needs Improvement), labelled them, and shared the compiled results with an inter-agency council. Not only did requests for productivity assistance shoot up immediately, but actual public service productivity results did as well.

Pearson Law is not a Scientific Law

As mentioned earlier, Pearson’s Law is not a scientific law. It does not always hold true. In fact, it can easily backfire. When performance metrics are reported and tied to incentives, individuals often stop focusing on doing a good job and shift their entire attention to focusing on the numbers than on real accomplishments.

This unintended consequence is known in economics as Goodhart’s Law, which states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. For example, if a delivery worker's performance is judged solely by the volume of packages delivered in a day, they will prioritize speed over quality or customer experience. Once the basic functional requirement of a delivery is met, they may rush to the next stop without a second thought. Instead of ensuring that a customer safely receives a product, a worker might simply leave it on a porch, completely unconcerned with whether it gets stolen or ruined by the elements.

Furthermore, when the stakes are high, adopting rigid performance metrics drastically increases the pressure to cheat. If an employee's job security, bonuses, or promotions are strictly linked to a specific performance baseline, they will find themselves under immense pressure to hit that number at all costs, even if it means sacrificing ethics or manipulating data.

Whose Measure of Success

Measuring success is tricky and difficult. Not only are many elements of success inherently unmeasurable, but whoever judges whether a service is satisfactory or not is also important. Do government officials decide whether an agency successfully delivers a service, or do the people the agency serves decide? Or should citizens, more broadly, make that judgment?

Clients are people who use a government service whereas citizens, generally, are people who have interest in effective and efficient government service even if they do not use a particular service.

Too often, people are quick to say that whoever uses the service should judge service quality. That makes intuitive sense. After all, as often said, “The man who wears the shoe know best where it pinches.” Consequently, client satisfaction often becomes an overwhelming indicator of success.

According to some benchmarking systems—such as those found in Merren’s CSAT Benchmark Report (opens in a new tab)—a public organization typically requires a customer satisfaction score (CSAT) of 65 to 74 percent for its performance to be considered acceptable. A score between 75 and 84 percent is considered good, while world-class performance demands 85 percent or higher.

However, treating clients as the sole arbiters of success has drawbacks. Client satisfaction measures "demand" satisfaction, which often overlooks "supply-side" constraints. Service agencies may genuinely want to satisfy clients, but they are frequently hamstrung by cumbersome regulations, rigid processes, and limited resources. Alternatively, they might appease clients in ways that artificially inflate survey results but are ultimately fiscally irresponsible or unethical—such as approving services for ineligible but chronically complaining clients.

While service providers may not wear the shoes they make, they understand their own production limitations. They might not know where the shoe hurts the wearer, but they are in the best position to know which client expectations are realistically achievable.

And what about citizens? Should they have a say in performance metrics, even if they do not use the service? Taxpayers are, after all, the ultimate funders of government programs. Citizens, collectively, are arguably the least biased guardians of the common good.

Ultimately, this raises vital questions: Are explicit measurements absolutely necessary for public sector’s success? Who should judge performance? Does co-developing performance standards with both clients and citizens—and publicly reporting them—genuinely help improve public service? What do you think?