Goodhart’s law

English economist Charles Goodhart, originally formulated his statement as: “Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.”

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to represent a good measure!"

Goal setting is one of the primary productivity and achievement settings in our everyday life.


Regardless of it being it business, corporate or personal related, think how many times you have been faced with a goal setting task.


And yes, we do tend to formulate them in the SMART way.

SMART = Specific / Measurable / Achievable / Realistic / Time-bound

It's about goal setting, but it's really about trying to address our main aims by stimulating or incentivizing people to reach the desired outcome in the most relevant way.


It's important to have in mind the Goodhart’s law, because there is a natural tendency of people to focus solely on the achievement of measure, but in the high stakes world of ours, that measure could be executed in a way that is very different, than what has been originally intended.


Due to a fact that it can cause an undesired way of achievement (behavior), before we define a measure, we should really have in place a proper thought process and take into consideration what we want and do not want to see along the way.

Efficient and transparent communication is a key ingredient here, in order to ensure compliant and effective processes!

- Can you relate with the above mentioned?

- Did you personally witnessed any significant deviation of what has been projected as a path towards the achievement of the targeted measure, simply by observing an "alternative route" that has to a certain extent even compromised that achievement?


Remembering of the Goodhart's law could contribute to more effective and compliant goal/target setting!

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