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People play differently when they’re keeping score
“Keeping score” can make a big difference. Growing up, if my friends and were shooting hoops it’d generally be casual and fun, just tossing the ball around and chatting. However, as soon as it became a game of any kind, everything changed. It was still fun, whether it was 2-on-2 or “HORSE” or anything else, but keeping score completely changed the environment.
The same applies to business, and this can be a good or a bad thing. As I’ve shared before, when people starting measuring targets, they often cease to be valuable measurements because the approach is different. The site sketchplanations has a great example, seen below.
Suppose your business makes nails, and you want to track the work more closely to encourage more output.
- You could perhaps track the number of nails made, but that could lead to people making a ton of tiny nails.
- Or, you could track the total weight of the nails made, but that could lead to people just making a few huge nails.
There are certainly wants to help curtail those options, such as requiring all nails to be a precise size, but people will often just find the fastest way to meet a measure rather than adhering to the purpose behind it.
