---
id: "concept-organizational-myopia"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["§ The Risks and Rewards Are Real", "¶6"]
tags: ["measurement-trap", "goodharts-law", "employee-behavior"]
related: ["claim-surveillance-backlash", "quote-surveillance-sake", "question-privacy-boundaries"]
definition: "A dysfunctional state where employees optimize their behavior for the metrics being measured by assessment systems, rather than focusing on actual value creation or experimentation."
sources: ["tail1"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail1"
originDay: 1
articleStem: "hbr-tail-112-continually-assessing-performance"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/06/the-pros-and-cons-of-continually-assessing-performance"
sourceTitle: "The Pros and Cons of Continually Assessing Performance"
---
# Organizational Myopia in Measurement

**Definition:** A dysfunctional state where employees optimize their behavior for the metrics being measured by assessment systems, rather than focusing on actual value creation or experimentation.

A critical risk of implementing continuous-assessment systems is inducing **organizational myopia** — a state where employees begin to optimize solely for what the system measures rather than what actually matters for the business. This is the workplace instantiation of **Goodhart's Law** ("when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"), which the enrichment identifies as the closest established framework to this warning.

If a system is overly rigid or extractive, it constrains behavior. To counter this, organizations must intentionally design these systems to *leave room for employees to experiment, develop new skills, and explore novel approaches* that have not yet been codified or captured in the existing data models. Well-designed systems should create a clear environment for learning rather than a restrictive set of metrics.

Myopia is the behavioral cousin of the trust/legitimacy risk in [[claim-surveillance-backlash]] and is directly answered by Carrol Chang's support-vs-surveillance framing in [[quote-surveillance-sake]]. It also motivates the governance boundary raised in [[question-privacy-boundaries]].


## Related across articles
- [[concept-key-results-accountability]]
- [[concept-omnichannel-metrics]]