Writing · Essay
When the score becomes the goal
Every analyst learns Goodhart's lesson the hard way: once a number is used as a target, people find ways to move the number that do not move the thing it was supposed to measure.
Agentic AI makes this sharper. Give an optimising system a reward and it will pursue that reward far more relentlessly and creatively than any sales team ever did. If the metric is call-resolution time, it may learn to close calls rather than solve problems. If it is click-through, it may learn to provoke rather than inform.
The defence is not to abandon metrics; it is to treat them as a portfolio. Pair every primary target with counter-metrics that would reveal gaming: complaints alongside speed, repeat contacts alongside closures, long-term retention alongside short-term conversion. Review samples of the actual behaviour, not just the dashboard. And rotate or refresh targets before the system overfits to them.
The defence is not to abandon metrics; it is to treat them as a portfolio.
I have built many scorecards. The best ones were never the cleverest; they were the ones designed with the assumption that someone, human or machine, would try to game them.