How Do You Know That What You Do Matters?

"We should not value what we measure. We should measure what we value." — Professor Dr Ger Graus OBE, first Global Director of Education at KidZania

The first time someone measured me, it was with grades. I was happy to be good at it. I didn't realize my identity was becoming attached to being smart, and that my feeling of being smart was attached to the grades. It felt nice and encouraging. What I didn't see was how easy it is to lose your identity that way. I discovered that later.

I had been accepted to the University of Edinburgh. The acceptance letter — the document I needed to apply for scholarships — arrived after the scholarship deadlines had closed. I didn't want to take on debt I couldn't see a way out of, so I decided to wait a year and try again. After one year, I didn't try again. Life moved on, and I never went back to that conversation.

I had always been the studious one, the smart one. My father kept asking when I'd go back — it was still "my project" on his eyes, the thing I was supposed to be doing. I'd compare myself to colleagues who had the degrees I'd wanted. That comparison still happens sometimes. The idea still circles back, even when it makes no practical sense. It satisfies something in a version of me that no longer exists but that I still miss. The metric that had organized my life was gone, and without it I didn't know how to evaluate myself.

Then came Kichihua, the education nonprofit I co-founded with Eduardo. We spent years trying to figure out what to measure. The question we couldn't answer was simpler than any framework: what did we actually want? We landed on events and attendance. By that number we were succeeding — an online congress, tens of speakers, a growing audience. The metric had been pulling us toward volume. But we didn't want to continue. The thing we actually cared about — whether someone did something with the things they learned was not really there, we had no idea if we were making that possible. We stoped Kicihua, not because it failed. Because we were succeeding in the wrong thing. A wrong metric.

After that I was measured by feeling. My output was evaluated by whether the people above me believed my work was good or not. There was no rubric, no target, no number attached to my name. Just someone's gut reaction. That sounds liberating and in some ways it was — I had freedom. But it was also disorienting. When no one tells you what good looks like, you never know if you're there. Not discouraging exactly, but not encouraging either. Just ambiguous.

Then in Crack the Code everything sharpened. The metric was output — first my own and then the output of the whole team. How many courses did we build? What state were they in? How complete? Then sales entered the picture with their own metrics which created a natural tension between the objectives of each area: quality vs growth. We moved fast. At the time I felt quality was being compromised because of the speed, but I understand now what I didn't then — speed matters more than quality in a startup. You can improve quality iteratively.

At my current company it has been a journey. First I was measured on how many new features and requests I could deliver. Pure throughput again. Then I got promoted and my role shifted to how well I could connect with clients and turn that into features and technical requirements. Then the situation changed again and now everything is attached to a financial metric. No more innovation alone, not without revenue. And everything that doesn't point toward it is gone, also part of the creativity and care.

I have always complained about my metrics. Every single one, even the ones I choose for myself. The grades felt great when I archive them but meaningless. The gut-feeling metric felt vague. The output metrics felt like they missed the point. The requirements and strategy perspective made me feel like I was doing nothing. The economic metrics alone feels soulless.

After enough systems fail you — and you fail them — a pattern emerges. Every metric I've lived under was trying to pull a particular behavior out of someone. Grades encourage memorization — or forbidden collaboration. Feature velocity encourages client satisfaction and technical debt. Client metrics encourage being available. Financial metrics encourage discipline, cutting costs and maximizing profit. Each one benefits someone — sometimes the employees, sometimes the beneficiary, sometimes the client, sometimes the shareholders. None of them are evil as I initially thought. I just don't align with all those perspectives equally.

I had been taking the judgment personally. A metric is not a verdict on your worth. It's a signal about what behavior the system wants to encourage. They are just levers, and the question is not whether the lever is fair but whether it pulls behavior in the direction you actually want to go.