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The Tyranny of Metrics Paperback – April 30, 2019

by Jerry Z. Muller (Author)

4.4 594 ratings

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How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government―and the quality of our lives

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―and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Muller delivers a riposte to bean counters everywhere with this trenchant study of our fixation with performance metrics."--Barbara Kiser, Nature

"Highly readable."--Luke Johnson, Sunday Times

"Many of us have the vague sense that metrics are leading us astray, stripping away context, devaluing subtle human judgment, and rewarding those who know how to play the system. Muller's book crisply explains where this fashion came from, why it can be so counterproductive and why we don't learn. It should be required reading for any manager on the verge of making the Vietnam body count mistake all over again."--Tim Harford, Financial Times

"Mercilessly exposes the downside of the cult of measurement and managerialism."--The Economist

Review

“Mercilessly exposes the downside of the cult of measurement and managerialism.”―The Economist

“Muller delivers a riposte to bean counters everywhere with this trenchant study of our fixation with performance metrics.”―Barbara Kiser, Nature

“Highly readable.”―Luke Johnson, Sunday Times

“Many of us have the vague sense that metrics are leading us astray, stripping away context, devaluing subtle human judgment, and rewarding those who know how to play the system. Muller’s book crisply explains where this fashion came from, why it can be so counterproductive and why we don’t learn. It should be required reading for any manager on the verge of making the Vietnam body count mistake all over again.”―Tim Harford, Financial Times

From the Back Cover

"In this clear and compelling book, Jerry Muller shows how our attempts to improve organizational outcomes through quantitative measures have metastasized into a culture of gaming and manipulation. Through carefully researched case studies on education, healthcare, and compensation, The Tyranny of Metrics makes a convincing case that we need to restore judgment and ethical considerations at a time when shallow quantification threatens the integrity of our most important institutions."--Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School

"Have you ever wondered why universities make the mistake of hiring presidents with little or no experience in higher education, or why, nine times out of ten, these foreign imports fail? Then read Jerry Muller's new book and you will understand such folly as one more instance of an unhappy, massive trend--abandoning the situated judgment of experienced professionals in favor of the supposedly objective judgment promised (but not delivered) by the magic bullet of metrics: standardized measures and huge data banks touted as generating insight and wisdom all by themselves. Muller dismantles this myth in a brisk and no-nonsense prose that has this reader crying 'yes, yes' at every sentence."--Stanley Fish, author of Winning Arguments and Think Again

"Quantification, once only a tool, has become a cult. I can think of no better deprogrammer than Jerry Muller, whose renowned skills in dissecting political and social doctrines are evident here. The Tyranny of Metrics should be essential reading for managers and the managed alike."--Edward Tenner, author of The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do and Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

"In The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Muller has brought to life the many ways in which numerical evaluations result in deleterious performance: in our schools, our universities, our hospitals, our military, and our businesses. This book addresses a major problem."--George A. Akerlof, Nobel Prize-winning economist

"The Tyranny of Metrics is an important and accessible book about a growing problem. It comes as close as anything I've read to showing us how to break out of the dysfunctional cycle of measuring, finding out that measuring doesn't get us where we want to go, but then measuring some more."--David Chinitz, School of Public Health, Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School

"Broad in scope and ambition, persuasively argued, and engagingly written, The Tyranny of Metrics is a very compelling book."--Mark Schlesinger, Yale University

About the Author

Jerry Z. Muller is professor of history at the Catholic University of America and the author of many books, including The Mind and the Market and Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (April 30, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691191913
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691191911
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #57,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in Business Statistics
- #39 in Statistics (Books)
- #647 in Business Management (Books)

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4.4 594 ratings

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Jerry Z. Muller

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Jerry Z. Muller’s books, articles, and lecture courses are on the border between history, social science, philosophy, and public policy.

His most recent book, PROFESSOR OF APOCALYPSE: THE MANY LIVES OF JACOB TAUBES, was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2022.

His previous book, THE TYRANNY OF METRICS, was published by Princeton University Press in 2018 and has been translated into ten languages.

He is the author of five previous books, all available from Amazon.

His lecture series, “THINKING ABOUT CAPITALISM,” is available from The Great Courses.

An emeritus professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. he writes and lectures about a variety of historical and contemporary subjects, including capitalism; nationalism; conservatism; the history of social, political, economic, and religious thought; and modern German and Jewish history.

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Customers say

Customers find the book informative and useful for professionals in coaching, consulting, and training. They appreciate the good information and analysis on the use of metrics. The book is considered an interesting and provocative topic. Readers find it concise and timely, describing it as a quick read that will open their eyes.

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Information quality Readability Interest Length Pace

38 customers mention "Information quality"27 positive11 negative

Customers find the book provides useful information about when statistics can mislead decisions. They appreciate the examples and hypotheses surrounding the outcomes of metrics. The author analyses numbers from all directions, covering a wide range of subjects in the public and private sectors. While some data can be good, he warns of its dangers.

"...The examples are for the most part telling and memorable, relating how aspects of modern society from business to education to medicine to charity..." Read more

"...It provides a lot of good information about when statistics actually skew decisions in a negative manner...." Read more

"...This is the worst one I read. His conclusions are fine, if perhaps a bit obvious, but he backs the arguments up with cherry-picked and thinly..." Read more

"...Muller breaks down how the data can be good in some instances, but also warns of the dangers of relying on the data too much for certain practice..." Read more

38 customers mention "Readability"33 positive5 negative

Customers find the book readable and informative. They say it's useful for professionals in coaching, consulting, human resources, and training. The introductory essay explains why metrics are important and walks readers through common terminology. The prose is sparkling and the argument is tight.

"...The examples are for the most part telling and memorable, relating how aspects of modern society from business to education to medicine to charity..." Read more

"This is a very interesting read that goes counter to the current paradigm of using metrics for every little decision in our lives...." Read more

"...For this reason, they argue, this book is only of limited value--well-written, but nothing new...." Read more

"This is an easy read from Muller, and the lack of challenge corresponds to a lack of depth...." Read more

3 customers mention "Interest"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the topic interesting and informative. They appreciate the provocative analysis of pros and cons.

"...Anyway, this is an important and interesting topic so I recommend reading stuff by people who know what they're talking about. Not this guy." Read more

"not an easy read but ... fascinating - really fascinating ... thoughts and theories I have considered for a long time" Read more

"Provocative and informative analysis of the pros and cons of the use of metrics to evaluate performane..." Read more

3 customers mention "Length"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's length. They find it both short and long, with a high value-per-page.

"...Happily, it is short enough, and engaging enough, to make this an prospect attractive." Read more

"...This one is completely different. First, it's short. The value-density per page is extremely high. The insights per line quotient is high...." Read more

"Long and academic...." Read more

3 customers mention "Pace"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book timely and concise. It's a good quick read that will open many eyes.

"...A good quick and concise read that will open a lot of eyes." Read more

"...Muller's book is timely and incisive. I'm midway through my third reading of the book and enjoying it immensely." Read more

"Very timely book about mass delusion with poorly understood numbers." Read more

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Neurasthenic
Intelligent, thoughtful, a pleasure to read, and in the spirit of The Death of Common Sense
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2022
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I loved this book from page one through very nearly the end. The examples are for the most part telling and memorable, relating how aspects of modern society from business to education to medicine to charity to government service have been seduced by the gospel that nothing is worth achieving unless it can be quantified and reported, and how in nearly every case results have been perverted and missions have been cheapened as a result.

The discussion of how even for-profit businesses have been hurt by an obsession with metrics seemed at first incongruous and perhaps a bridge too far, but then when one considers insane practices like stack ranking of employees and the damage done to great firms like General Electric as a result, it's clear that Muller is right. Even in finance, the one industry where in theory a single metric (profitability) might most accurately define the mission of a firm, compensating employees on the basis of simple metrics can lead to perversions like the Wells Fargo accounts scandal.

In fields like foreign aid and peacekeeping by the military, where aims are more nuanced and the connections between one's actions and the intended result more variable between scenarios, the costs of metric obsession are correspondingly higher.

The final chapter of the book, which tries to draw conclusions from what has come before, is weaker than the rest. Anybody who reads the book will draw conclusions on his or her own; Muller's synopsis adds little. Nonetheless, the book is an easy five stars.

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Hamilscorpse
Very interesting
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a very interesting read that goes counter to the current paradigm of using metrics for every little decision in our lives. It provides a lot of good information about when statistics actually skew decisions in a negative manner. A good quick and concise read that will open a lot of eyes.

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Andrew Everett
metric fixation
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2019
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“This book argues that while they are a potentially valuable tool, the virtues of accountability metrics have been oversold, and their costs are often underappreciated.” There are chapters on the dysfunction of “metric fixation” in colleges and universities; schools; medicine; policing; the military; business; and philanthropy. Problems include gaming the system, costs exceeding benefits, and diverting effort from the core mission. A major theme is metrics as a substitute for competent judgment.

“The most characteristic feature of metric fixation is the aspiration to replace judgment based on experience with standardized measurement… With all that time spent reporting, meeting, and coordinating, there is little time left for actual doing. This drain on time and effort is exacerbated by the tendency of executives under the spell of metric fixation to distrust the experiences judgment of those under them.”

“There is often an unexamined faith that amassing data and sharing it widely within the organization will result in improvements of some sort—even if much information has to be denuded of nuance and context to turn it into easily transferred ‘data.’”

“Judgment is a sort of skill at grasping the unique particularities of a situation, and it entails a talent for synthesis rather than analysis… A feel for the whole and a sense for the unique are precisely what numerical metrics cannot supply.”

Colleges and Universities

The longest chapter deals with colleges and universities, where the author feels the pain most directly. Muller is a history professor at Catholic University of America.

“In an attempt to obtain ‘value,’ successive British administrations have created a series of government agencies charged with evaluating the country’s universities… There are audits of teaching quality, such as the ‘Teaching Quality Assessment,’ evaluated largely on the extent to which various procedures are followed and paperwork filed, few of which have much to do with actual teaching… A mushroom-like growth of administrative staff has occurred… The search for more data means more data managers, more bureaucracy, more expensive software systems. Ironically, in the name of controlling costs, expenditures wax.”

“In academia as elsewhere, that which gets measured gets gamed.”

“In addition to expenditures that do nothing to raise the quality of teaching or research, the growing salience of rankings has led to ever new varieties of gaming through creaming and improving numbers through omission or distortion of data.” The book explains how American law schools manipulate their USNWR rankings.

“Colleges, both public and private, are measured and rewarded based in part on their graduation rates, which are one of the criteria by which colleges are ranked, and in some cases, remunerated… There is pressure on professors—sometimes overt, sometimes tacit—to be generous in awarding grades. An ever-larger portion of the teaching faculty comprises adjunct instructors—and an adjunct who fails a substantial portion of her class (even if their performance merits it) is less likely to have her contract renewed.”

“When individual faculty members, or whole departments, are judged by the number of publications, whether in the form of articles or books, the incentive is to produce more publications, rather than better ones… Only citations in the journals within the author’s discipline were counted. That too was problematic, since it tended to shortchange works of trans-disciplinary interest.”

Schools

An unintended consequence of K-12 testing-and-accountability legislation is that “students too often learn test-taking strategies rather than substantive knowledge… Because students in English are taught to answer multiple choice and short-answer questions based on brief passages, the students are worse at reading extended texts and writing extended essays.”

“An emphasis on measured performance through standardized tests creates another perverse outcome, as Campbell’s Law predicts: it destroys the predictive validity of the tests themselves. Tests of performance are designed to evaluate the knowledge and ability that students have acquired in their general education. When that education becomes focused instead on developing the students’ performance on the tests, the test no longer measures what it was created to evaluate.”

“The costs of trying to use metrics to turn schools into gap-closing factories are therefore not only monetary. The broader mission of schools to instruct in history and in civics is neglected as attention is focused on attempting to improve the reading and math scores of lower-performing groups.”

Medicine

Do the reported numbers mean what you think they mean? The WHO’s World Health Report 2000 ranked U.S. healthcare system 37th among the nations of the world. “Scott W. Atlas, a physician and healthcare analyst, has scrutinized and contextualized those claims, which turn out to be more than a little misleading. Most of us assume that the WHO rankings measured the overall level of health. But actual health outcomes accounted for only 25 percent of the ranking scale. Half of the points awarded were for egalitarianism: 25 percent for ‘health distribution,’ and another 25 percent for ‘financial fairness,’ where ‘fairness’ was defined as having everyone pay the same percent of their income for healthcare. That is, only a system which the richer you are, the more you pay for healthcare was deemed fair. The criterion, in short, was ideological. The fact that there was a number attached (37th) gave it the appearance of objectivity and reliability. But in fact, the overall performance ranking is deceptive.”

Conclusions

“Indeed, the ease of measuring may be inversely proportional to the significance of what is measured. To put it another way, ask yourself, is what you are measuring a proxy for what you really want to know? If the information is not very useful or not a good proxy for what you’re really aiming at, you’re probably better off not measuring it.”

“What are the costs of acquiring the metrics? … Every moment you or your colleagues or employees are devoting to the production of metrics is time not devoted to the activities being measured.”

“Measurements are more likely to be meaningful when they are developed from the bottom up, with input from teachers, nurses, and the cop on the beat. That means asking those with tacit knowledge that comes from direct experience to provide suggestions about how to develop appropriate performance standards… Remember, that a system of measured performance will work to the extent that the people being measured believe in its worth.”

Muller summarizes with 10 unintended but predictable negative consequences of metric fixation: “Goal displacement through diversion of effort to what gets measured; promoting short-termism; costs in employee time; diminishing utility… [as] the marginal costs of assembling and analyzing the metrics exceed the marginal benefits; rule cascades [in response to gaming and cheating]; rewarding luck; discouraging risk-taking; discouraging innovation; discouraging cooperation [by promoting competition]; degradation of work; and costs to productivity.”

“In the end, there is no silver bullet, no substitute for actually knowing one’s subject and one’s organization, which is partly a matter of experience and partly a matter of unquantifiable skill. Many matters of importance are too subject to judgment and interpretation to be solved by standardized metrics. Ultimately, the issue is not one of metrics versus judgment, but metrics as informing judgment, which includes knowing how much weight to give to metrics, recognizing their characteristic distortions, and appreciating what can’t be measured. In recent debates, too many politicians, business leaders, policymakers, and academic officials have lost sight of that.”

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Luca .T
Wow!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2022
Verified Purchase

Super interesting and thought-provoking book about the metrics that regulate most of our societies, from internet, to medicine, law and order and economics.
I feel I learnt so much and the language is always simplified and easy to digest.

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JUAN DIEGO LOPEZ CARDENAS
De obligatoria lectura para cualquier gestor
Reviewed in Spain on April 29, 2021
Verified Purchase
Este libro explica e ilustra con multitud de ejemplos por qué los bonus por resultados sólo pueden utilizarse en actividades puramente mecánicas, en las que no es necesario pensar.
Lamentablemente cada vez quedan menos de estos trabajos. Si puedes gestionarlo con métricas, puedes automatizarlo por completo.
Para el resto de actividades, las métricas son contraproducentes. Este libro te explicará exactamente por qué.
Elevado riesgo de depresión si trabajas en una multinacional, leer con precaución

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Saul Noriega
General
Reviewed in Mexico on January 10, 2020
Verified Purchase
El tamaño del libro es perfecto, al igual que la calidad de las hojas. El contenido del libro es facil de entender - Esta en Inglés. En si no propone una solución a la tirania de las metricas, pero si profundiza en como surgieron y como estan siendo aplicadas. La solucion pueden buscarla en libros que hablen acerca de New Performance Management

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Livro
Reviewed in Brazil on August 12, 2019
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Excelente

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ASA
Highly recommended
Reviewed in Canada on February 26, 2018
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An excellent book. Clear, coherent writing and very interesting.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, thoughtful, a pleasure to read, and in the spirit of The Death of Common Sense

4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting

5.0 out of 5 stars metric fixation

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5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!

3.0 out of 5 stars De obligatoria lectura para cualquier gestor

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5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended

Intelligent, thoughtful, a pleasure to read, and in the spirit of The Death of Common Sense

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