Scribd
Upload
4 views1 page

The Dangers of Short-Term Metrics

Metrics tend to overemphasize short-term concerns like click through rates and earnings over long-term impacts. Long-term trends are complex with many factors and harder to quantify, such as how promoting harmful content affects user trust over time or how privacy issues and manipulation impact hiring. Short-term metrics also fail to account for long-form journalism that shapes understanding of issues and leads to societal change. As shown by Wells Fargo, overemphasizing metrics like cross-selling led the company to open fraudulent accounts, harming long-term customer relationships. Overly focusing on metrics removes consideration of important long-term concerns about values, trust, reputation, and societal impact.

Uploaded by

Edward
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
4 views1 page

The Dangers of Short-Term Metrics

Metrics tend to overemphasize short-term concerns like click through rates and earnings over long-term impacts. Long-term trends are complex with many factors and harder to quantify, such as how promoting harmful content affects user trust over time or how privacy issues and manipulation impact hiring. Short-term metrics also fail to account for long-form journalism that shapes understanding of issues and leads to societal change. As shown by Wells Fargo, overemphasizing metrics like cross-selling led the company to open fraudulent accounts, harming long-term customer relationships. Overly focusing on metrics removes consideration of important long-term concerns about values, trust, reputation, and societal impact.

Uploaded by

Edward
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Metrics tend to overemphasize short-term concerns

It is much easier to measure short-term quantities: click through rates, month-over-


month churn, quarterly earnings. Many long-term trends have a complex mix of factors
and are tougher to quantify. What is the long-term impact on user trust of having your
brand associated with promoting pedophilia, white supremacy, and flat-earth theories?
What is the long-term impact on hiring to be the subject of years worth of privacy
scandals, political manipulation, and facilitating genocide?

Simply measuring what users click on is a short-term concern, and does not take into
account factors like the potential long-term impact of a long-form investigative article
which may have taken months to research and which could help shape a reader’s
understanding of a complex issue and even lead to significant societal changes.

A recent Harvard Business Review article looked at Wells Fargo as a case study of how
letting metrics replace strategy can harm a business. After identifying cross-selling as a
measure of long-term customer relationships, Wells Fargo went overboard emphasizing
the cross-selling metric: intense pressure on employees combined with an unethical
sales culture led to 3.5 million fraudulent deposit and credit card accounts being opened
without customers’ consent. The metric of cross-selling is a much more short-term
concern compared to the loftier goal of nurturing long-term customer relationships.
Overemphasizing metrics removes our focus from long-term concerns such as our
values, trust and reputation, and our impact on society and the environment, and
myopically focuses on the short-term.

You might also like