Measuring Strategic Work
KPIs are effective for operational work that is one-dimensional and repeatable, but they fail in strategic contexts by oversimplifying complex systems and distorting behavior. Strategic work involves multidimensional tradeoffs, dependencies, and evolving constraints that resist reduction to a single metric. The challenge lies in avoiding both simplistic metrics and overly complicated frameworks, instead maintaining a balance that supports genuine understanding without illusion of control.
- ▪KPIs work well for operational tasks like manufacturing throughput or server uptime where performance is one-dimensional.
- ▪In strategic work, KPIs often fail by obscuring tradeoffs, incentivizing misaligned behaviors, and creating blind spots in organizational seams.
- ▪Complex systems require multidimensional understanding, while complicated frameworks with many metrics can create the illusion of insight without real value.
- ▪Gaming KPIs is a rational response when careers or compensation depend on them, especially when strategic decisions conflict with metric targets.
- ▪OKRs add narrative context to KPIs but do not resolve the fundamental tension between simplicity and strategic complexity.
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On Measuring Strategic Work March 30, 2026 KPIs are simple. That is their virtue and their failure mode. A single number, a single axis, a clear direction: up is good or down is good. For operational work that is decomposable and repeatable, this works. For strategic work, simplicity becomes simplistic. The KPI flattens a multi-dimensional system into a scalar, and the scalar distorts behavior along every axis it doesn’t measure. But the alternative has its own failure mode. Strategic work is complex: competing constraints, dependencies that cross domains, tradeoffs that shift over time. Trying to capture that complexity can easily become complicated: layers of process, frameworks, scorecards, strategy maps, cascaded objective trees.
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