Bad things happen when the personal motive gets unmoored from the purpose motive in an organisation.

The purpose motive might be

• help patients get better
• prevent crime
• educate children
• get people from A to B safely
• help people get back into work

We are naturally motivated by purpose.

But when you set a numerical target in an organisation, the personal motive always gets unmoored from the purpose motive. We become motivated to do what it takes to meet the target. The purpose motive becomes a distant memory.

We become motivated to do peculiar things to meet a target like:

• ignoring or parking anything that doesn’t meet the target
• cherry picking certain people/cases that help meet the target
• rushing people through to meet the target (especially dangerous in police, social services & the NHS)
• ignoring patients/customers/citizens who don’t help meet the target
• reclassifying people and cases so they help meet the target or don’t ‘count’
• stopping work and storing it up (when the target is met) so it can be used to meet next month’s target

When staff are busy meeting targets, bad things happen. For example:

• some patients die needlessly
• some people get a rubbish service
• some people get a service they don’t need
• costs rise because we do stuff for people they don’t need
• costs rise because the reporting bureaucracy costs money
• staff feel bad because they know it’s wrong
• no one knows what is really going on because most of the numbers are pretend
• the reputation and long-term viability of the organisation suffers

The lesson? Never set a numerical target in an organisation unless you want bad things to happen.