Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” A famous historical example is the "cobra effect": in India during British rule, the government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was successful. Then people started breeding cobras for the income. The reward programme was scrapped so the breeders set their snakes free & increased the cobra numbers. Two strategies to "cobra-proof" our goals & metrics: 1) Define metrics clearly in ways that reduce the potential for them to be misinterpreted or gamed 2) Use a diverse set of metrics collectively to measure the “true goal” medium.com/illumination/the-…. By @gauravjainio