'The company dangled an unreachable carrot': Employee laments their impossible targets that were only designed to make their team work harder for nothing

There's this interesting thing that happens with KPIs, targets, and business focus. Sure, putting impetus into these areas will usually result in increasing them, creating the image of a larger, healthier, more profitable business. But what is the cost? More, importantly, where is the cost? You're not looking for it, you're not tracking it, and you won't know what it is and probably won't even know where it was or how to measure it until it's too late.

This happens all the time in businesses where leaders are focusing on a singular target through performance indicators and incentives, encouraging their staff to improve and move the bar for this one singular metric. Improvements will be taken as proof that there were inefficiencies in the way workers were doing their roles that they've now figured out or that they weren't working hard enough. When in reality, the truth is that other priorities have fallen by the wayside. Now, management expects the workers to keep up with these impossible standards they have set for themselves, resulting in a vicious feedback cycle that self-perpetuates as management pushes to improve this one metric.

You eventually end up with this really nice-looking facade of a business when presented from this one angle, while the rest of the structure has rotted away… right down to the foundations.