The Tyranny of Metrics

By: Jerry Z. Muller

Narrated by: Matthew Josdal

Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens our schools, medical care, businesses, and government

Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself. The result is a tyranny of metrics that threatens the quality of our lives and most important institutions.

In this timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging "gaming the stats" or "teaching to the test". That's because what can and does get measured is not always worth measuring, may not be what we really want to know, and may draw effort away from the things we care about.

Along the way, we learn why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But metrics can be good when used as a complement to - rather than a replacement for - judgment based on personal experience, and Muller also gives examples of when metrics have been beneficial. Complete with a checklist of when and how to use metrics, The Tyranny of Metrics is an essential corrective to a rarely questioned trend that increasingly affects us all.

©2018 Princeton University Press (P)2018 Tantor

Half the truth

This is an interesting idea for a book, but the introduction paragraph sets out exactly where it fails. It has no underlying economic theory except that capitalism should be working, and this recent trend of metric-driven performance rewards is skewing things. The author doesn't seem to consider that maybe this is liberalism at its finest, trying to preserve capitalism with false metrics.

Also it's pretty irredeemable that the book argues for less transparency at the end. No, don't show us more of out corrupt politicians. That forces them to be two-faced.

You might think I'm being hyperbolic by this summary of the last chapter. I'm really not.

Jumps to conclusions

This is a very thought provoking book for a person like me who loves to collect and analyze data. While the author makes many great points regarding when and how to use metrics appropriately he appears to jump to many conclusions without presenting any facts to back them up. I believe that the author may be mistaken in his assertion that “not everything can be measured” - this may be technically accurate but, given enough thought, one can find valid proxies for practically anything (with the help of experts in the field being measured)

The perfect intro to a non-existent Part 2

Maybe my expectations were too high or I didnt read the description well enough. My assumption is if you're interested in this book it's because you already have an issue with and a mindset that your business or environment is over-metrics-ed. The book presented a lot of good examples of when and where metrics go wrong. Some of them I already knew of, some I didnt. They were truly interesting and I enjoyed learning more about them. However, my issue is that the book fails to answer the question "now what?". Some references to favoring experience over pure metrics or not using metrics at all were either totally obvious or unhelpful. Discussion of involving those you're measuring in coming up with the measurements to ensure buy in was important and interesting, but too little attention was given to it - just one example and a general recommendation to do it. Would have been better to explore that with more case studies and examples. I already know theres an issue with too many metrics, and probably so do you if you're looking at this book. Tell me how to fix that or do it in a more useful manner. Perhaps that's too much to ask, but hence the disappointment.

An incomplete perspective

This book is coming to the field from the direction of the social sciences. It is the area where our metrics have the most problems. So, it is understandable for the author to assume the same problems across the rest of the field. The first chapter in the last chapter have a lot of value. the rest of the book makes an incomplete case in various domains. The weakest, of course, is in the area of business and finance. It is clear these areas are not the authors forte.

Good book outlining a major problems

So I enjoyed the book and the problems surrounding using metrics to judge performance. However, discussion of alternatives or other methods are lacking.

Great brain food

The world needs more of these concepts. I hope that other research will expand upon this.

A dry topic that is put into every day terms

Metrics can be used for progress or for maintaining the status quo. It has different use cases to bring light to how metrics can be abused.

Opportunity Missed

Full disclosure: I'm a metrics evangelist. I listened to this book to challenge my world view. It did that. But having set up the perils of misapplying metrics, I was ready for the author to provide the principles of metrics properly applied along with examples of times when such applications made all the difference. Instead he pulled up short. Too bad. He could have titled the book, "Metrics - Don't Bother." Don't consume this book without also taking in something like,"Prove It" by Stacey Barr and "How to Measure Anything" by Doug Hubbard. Then make up your own mind.

Managers, Politicians, Please Read This!

As Muller says, there's nothing new here except for his cross-disciplinary compiling of how the use of metrics, accountability, and transparency are fulfilling Illich's promise that institutions eventually grow to a point where they counteract their original purpose. His use of tyranny is no exaggeration. Beginning with the personal story of how metrics ruined his work as a university department head, he follows the line through policing, medicine, schooling, and politics.

In my dream world, I could dump the information contained in this book into the heads of all the managers and politicians out there to counteract the terrible zeitgeist of measurement as the tool of bureaucratic decentralization.

great insight

really describes the modern corporate world perfectly. great read, highly suggested if you want to understand why beauracracy controls the work place