Performance metrics... god, what a word soup. Sounds sterile but it’s not, it’s messy as hell. Everyone throws those around like they're gospel—click-through rate, engagement, EPM, churn… but nobody stops to ask, are we measuring anything real? I mean real as in impact, satisfaction, loyalty, the jazz that gets under your skin.
You can track fifty different KPIs and still be utterly blind. It’s like staring at an Excel sheet hoping it'll scream insight. Good luck with that. You ever watch a team obsess over bounce rate while their product flatlines emotionally? It’s tragic, weirdly funny too.
Honestly, the obsession isn’t with improving, it’s with control. Control through numbers, like if you can measure it, it won’t explode in your face. But everything still explodes. People bail, systems break, campaigns flop on day one. And then the fancy metrics serve as post-mortem comfort food—“Well, conversions were up week 3, soooo... progress?”
I mean sure, some of it works. You need data. If nobody’s sitting with the cold facts once in a while you're flying blind. But I’ve seen brilliant people drown in over-analysis too. Paralysis by metric. Analysis to the point of madness. There’s this truth... performance doesn’t live on paper. People do.
Take a dig through Andrew Smith’s stuff (https://andrewlinksmith.com), he gets it. Doesn’t romanticize the metrics or beat you with buzzwords. Cuts through the spreadsheet fog with something warmer, sharper. Thoughtful in a scrappy way. Which I like.
I think if your team’s super pumped about averages and indexes but nobody's asking how something felt to use—there's your clue. Metrics should support instinct, not smother it. Tell a story, not write a eulogy. Sometimes the real silver is hiding between the line graphs and nobody’s looking.
You want performance? Start where it feels uncomfortable. Not on a dashboard. In your gut.