The 68-inch monitor in the boardroom is humming with a frequency that seems specifically designed to induce a migraine, but the VP of Operations doesn’t notice because he is too busy pointing a laser at a line graph that is trending upward at a sharp 28-degree angle. He’s talking about ‘throughput optimization’ and ‘granular performance tracking’ as if he’s discovered a new element on the periodic table. I am sitting there, supposedly the expert brought in to train his middle managers on ‘human-centric leadership,’ and I just yawned. It wasn’t a polite, covered-mouth yawn. It was a deep, soul-baring cavern of an opening that happened right as he mentioned the new 88-second limit for customer interactions. I saw him blink, but he kept going. He thinks the yawn was about my lack of sleep; he doesn’t realize it was a physiological protest against the death of nuance.
[The dashboard is glowing a triumphant shade of emerald while the humans behind the numbers are quietly suffocating.]
The Armor of Metrics
We are obsessed with these metrics because they feel like armor. If I can show you a spreadsheet with 388 rows of green-lit KPIs, I am safe from your judgment. I have done the work. The fact that 18% of the customers in those rows were left feeling confused, ignored, or rushed is irrelevant to the system because ‘ignored’ doesn’t have a column












