The Tyranny of Metrics Audiobook (Free)

How the obsession with quantifying individual overall performance threatens our schools, health care, businesses, and federal government

Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the fact that the road to success can be quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards predicated on the quantities. However in our zeal to instill the evaluation procedure with medical rigor, we’ve eliminated from measuring functionality to fixating on calculating itself. The effect can be a tyranny of metrics that about The Tyranny of Metrics threatens the quality of our lives and most essential institutions. Within this timely and powerful publication, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing-and shows how exactly we can begin to fix the problem.

Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and armed forces, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly amazing pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by stimulating ‘game playing the stats’ or ‘teaching towards the test.’ That’s because what can and does get measured is not always worth calculating, may not be what we actually want to find out, and may pull effort from the items we value. On the way, we learn why paying for measured performance doesn’t work, why medical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But metrics can be great when used as a go with to-rather than a replacement for-judgment predicated on personal encounter, and Muller also provides examples of when metrics have been beneficial.

Complete with a checklist of when and how exactly to use metrics, The Tyranny of Metrics is an important corrective to a rarely questioned trend that increasingly affects people.