Wrong Goals

I’ve been using Donella Meadows’ book [recently published posthumously by Chelsea Green], Thinking in Systems, to reinforce systems thinking with my eighth grade class. One excerpt I really like is in a section titled “Seeking the Wrong Goal.”

 “[O]ne of the most powerful ways to influence the behavior of a system is through its purpose or goal. That’s because the goal is the direction setter of the system, the definer of discrepancies that require action, the indicator of compliance, failure, or success toward which balancing feedback spirals work. If the goal is defined badly, if it doesn’t measure what it’s supposed to measure, if it doesn’t reflect what the system really wants, then the system can’t possibly produce a desirable result…. If the desired system state is good education, measuring that goal by the amount of money spent per student will ensure money spent per student. If the quality of education is measured by performance on standardized tests, the system will produce performance on standardized tests. Whether either of these measures is correlated with good education is at least worth thinking about. These examples confuse effort with result, one of the most common mistakes in designing systems around the wrong goal.”

I was reminded of this concept when a mother, filling out a Chrysalis application form for next school year said that her son’s current teacher told her “I get a bonus if my class’s test scores go up and your son is bringing my test scores down.”