Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story: The McNamara Fallacy

How Ignoring the Right Metrics Can Lead to the Wrong Decisions

We live in a world where numbers drive decisions. Businesses track profits, schools track test scores as metrics for success, and hospitals track wait times. But what if we are tracking the wrong stuff?

That is where the McNamara Fallacy comes in. It's when people focus on measurable data and overlook what cannot be measured, despite the fact that those hard-to-measure elements are just as important (if not more so).