A metric can be completely valid and still give you an incomplete picture. That sounds obvious, but organizations — and countries — build a lot of decisions around whatever fits most cleanly on a dashboard.
In May 2026, Nature covered a UN effort to develop a set of indicators that would complement GDP with measures touching income, health, inclusion and the environment. I like the debate because it is not really about whether GDP is “bad.” It is about what a single measure makes visible, and what it pushes to the edge of the frame.
Every metric compresses reality.
GDP tells us something useful about economic activity. A hospital wait-time measure tells us something useful about access. Revenue tells us something useful about demand. None of those numbers, on their own, explain the system that produced them.
The management version of the same mistake is optimizing a target until the target stops representing the outcome we actually cared about.
The goal is not to collect every possible metric. It is to know what your chosen metric cannot tell you.
I like dashboards that force a trade-off into view.
A strong dashboard usually combines measures that make it harder to declare victory too early. Speed beside quality. Revenue beside margin. Access beside outcomes. Productivity beside worker experience. Growth beside environmental or social cost where those costs are material.
The right balance depends on the problem, but the design principle is consistent: pair the metric people are naturally motivated to maximize with the metric that captures the most important unintended consequence.
This is partly why I enjoyed studying Environment & Society alongside life sciences.
It trained a slightly different reflex. A system can produce a desirable output and an undesirable externality at the same time. A local improvement can create a downstream cost. A measure can look strong because it has drawn a convenient boundary around the problem.
That habit carries surprisingly well into strategy. Before optimizing a number, I want to know what is outside its denominator.
Sources + further reading
- Lenharo M. Beyond GDP: 31 alternatives to the world’s favourite measure of economic health. Nature. May 8, 2026. Nature — Alternatives to GDP ↗
- OECD. OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2026. June 23, 2026. OECD — Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2026 ↗
These are personal research notes and commentary. I link the underlying sources so the evidence can be checked directly.