Behaviours Over Numbers: What You Measure Shapes What You Get

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Hello team,

Years ago, I inherited a team that had amazing metrics. Response times were down, ticket closure rates were up, and every dashboard was green. But when I dug deeper, I found something troubling: customers were frustrated, team morale was terrible, and people were gaming the system to hit numbers rather than solving problems.

We'd measured the wrong things. And we'd gotten exactly what we measured.

This week, let's talk about why behaviours matter more than numbers, and how to lead accordingly.

Here's a truth most leaders learn the hard way: people will optimise for whatever you measure. If you measure lines of code, you'll get verbose code. If you measure tickets closed, you'll get rushed resolutions. If you measure hours worked, you'll get presenteeism instead of productivity.

Numbers are seductive because they feel objective and scientific. They make leadership seem rational and data-driven. But every metric is actually a proxy for something deeper, a behaviour, a capability, a cultural value. When we forget this, we end up with teams that hit their targets while missing the point entirely.

The hidden costs of number-obsessed leadership:

Behaviour distortion. Teams start playing the game instead of doing the work. They find shortcuts, exploit loopholes, and optimise for measurement rather than mission. You wanted efficiency but got corner-cutting. You wanted speed but got carelessness.

Innovation suppression. When you rigidly track outputs, people stop experimenting because experiments don't always produce predictable numbers. The behaviours that drive breakthrough thinking, curiosity, risk-taking, and iterative learning can't be captured in a quarterly metric.

Trust erosion. Constant measurement sends a message: "I don't trust you to do the right thing unless I'm watching." High performers feel micromanaged. Teams become defensive. The culture shifts from ownership to compliance.

The best leaders I've worked with don't ignore numbers, they just recognise that numbers are outcomes, not causes. They focus on the behaviours that produce good outcomes, trusting that the metrics will follow.

Here's the shift: instead of asking "did we hit the target?" start asking "are we doing the things that predict success?"

Examples of behaviour-focused leadership:

Instead of measuring response time, measure whether teams are conducting thorough root cause analysis on recurring issues. The behaviour (deep problem-solving) predicts the outcome (fewer tickets, better response times).

Instead of measuring lines of code shipped, measure whether engineers are conducting meaningful code reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions. The behaviour (quality collaboration) predicts the outcome (maintainable, reliable systems).

Instead of measuring hours in the office, measure whether people are protecting focus time, having strategic conversations, and investing in learning. The behaviours (intentional work habits) predict the outcome (high-quality output).

The pattern is the same: identify the behaviours that drive the results you want, then create systems that reinforce those behaviours.

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1. Make values visible through what you recognise. Your team learns what matters by watching what gets celebrated. If you only recognise people who hit numbers, you're teaching that numbers are all that matter. Celebrate the designer who took extra time to nail the user experience. Recognise the engineer who mentored a junior teammate. Highlight the support person who went deep on customer empathy. These behaviours compound over time.

2. Create space for the behaviours you want. If you want strategic thinking, protect time for it. If you want collaboration, design workflows that require it. If you want learning, make it expected and resourced. Behaviours don't emerge from good intentions, they emerge from systems that enable them.

3. Model the behaviours yourself. Your team is watching how you work more than listening to what you say. If you tell them to take breaks but you never do, they learn breaks aren't really valued. If you preach work-life balance but email at midnight, they learn availability is what matters. Leadership is behaviour on display.

4. Use metrics as learning tools, not judgment tools. When numbers tell you something's off, get curious about the underlying behaviours. Don't just ask "why did we miss the target?" Ask "what behaviours led to this outcome? What's preventing the behaviours we need? What do we need to change?"

Here's what many leaders miss: the metrics you track at your level cascade down and shape behaviour at every level below you. If you obsess over velocity, your managers will obsess over velocity, and their teams will optimise for speed at the expense of everything else.

This is why behavioural leadership matters. When you focus on and reinforce healthy behaviors—ownership, collaboration, quality, learning, customer empathy—those values replicate throughout the organisation. You create a culture where people do the right thing because that's what the system rewards, not because they're being measured.

The teams that consistently outperform aren't the ones with the best metrics dashboards. They're the ones where people exhibit the behaviours that make great outcomes inevitable.

In the premium section below, I share the frameworks I've used to shift teams from metric obsession to behavior-based performance:

These aren't aspirational concepts, they're practical systems you can implement starting this month. Upgrade now »»>