Have you ever had a boss who valued numbers above all else? The kind of person who gets all bogged down in the minutia and can’t see the big picture? I had one of those bosses, the provost of a small university—in charge of all things academic—and I would have found his antics hilarious if the consequences weren’t so dire. Simply put, my boss never met a number he couldn’t misunderstand.
He was obsessed with metrics and spreadsheets, costs and quantities. The saying “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts” was utterly meaningless to him. You might as well be babbling in gibberish. Numbers, for him, were the be-all and end-all, an unassailable authority that represented all substance and significance. The sad irony was that, as much as he loved numbers, he rarely grasped their true meaning. To quote Oscar Wilde, he knew “the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
I could regale you with myriad stories of his numerical misadventures, but let me share just one—a personal favorite.
This university prided—and marketed—itself on providing a personal educational experience through individual attention. We touted our small class sizes, our one-on-one time with faculty, our open-door policies, and our respectable student-to-teacher ratio. On average, our classes had just 17 students, which was pretty good but a sharp downturn from the 15-student average of just a few years prior.
Despite all this, my numbers-loving boss took it on himself to save a few bucks at the expense of increasing the average class size once again. So what if larger classes went against our brand? Soon he was boasting how class sizes now averaged 19. It’s like gushing about the shitty mileage your car got on a cross-country roadtrip. “Ah-yup, we hadda pull over every cuppala hours to get gas, we did. Sweeeeet!”
I tried to explain to him that this increase would disproportionately burden faculty who taught the very courses where we needed to provide the most handholding. He waved me off, insisting that “no one’s going to notice two more students in their classroom.”
Note that in his number-addled brain, an average of two more students per class meant that every class would get precisely two more students—an even dispersal. No surprise, though, the distribution in reality was wildly variable, which he denied, end of discussion. Nothing could budge his stubbornness or shake his misbegotten pride even though his choices meant we could never rise as an institution above the mediocre.
Why We Number
Why do we put so much undo stock in numbers? Sure, quantification and measurement are vital tools, except when they ain’t: “not everything that can be counted counts.” But we imbue numbers with a near-mystical momentousness, granting them more authority than they deserve, as though they are the final word or even the only word.
So, what’s the downside? For one thing, our hyper-privileging of numbers induces people to game the system, as we see in the prevalence of Goodhart’s Law.
And what about those sketchy politicians who notoriously use numbers to deceive and misdirect with their “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Even media outlets regularly broadcast dubious but accurate-seeming poll numbers just to attract more viewers. Meanwhile, we overlook more qualitative yet meaningful measurements.
Of course, numbers are not inherently untrustworthy—far from it. Quantitative analysis is an immensely powerful tool for understanding the world around us. But we have to be careful not to fetishize it, to elevate numbers above all other forms of knowledge and evaluation. And, importantly—unlike my former boss—we need to comprehend the true meaning of numbers if we are going to rely on them. For instance, let’s say that a recent political poll shows candidate A beating candidate B by 3 points with a margin of error of 4 points. Who is really in the lead? (Hint: It’s a trick question.)
You see this sort of thing in employers’ handling of workloads. I’ve written before on how measuring time on task is a poor substitute for assessing productivity.
Still, countless bosses cling to the formula that "butts in desk chairs equals efficiency,” an argument that features prominently in the debate over working from home.
And don't even get me started on those poorly executed and arbitrary task percentage breakdowns, which divvy days up into neat little parcels, as though that is a measure of productivity. Too often it’s not even clear what exactly the percentages measure; is it time on task, effort, outcomes, or something else altogether?
We have this compulsion to make things look more “scientific” by citing numbers even when they are meaningless. In The Three Cultures, Jerome Kagan argues that early economists intentionally chose to emulate natural scientists in a bid to fast-track the credibility of their emerging field. To do so, they leaned heavily into quantitative methodologies to the near-exclusion of the mix of approaches employed by their fellow social scientists from more established disciplines. Only in recent decades has the field begun changing its ways.
Have you ever hung a picture on a wall? It makes sense to use a level to get it perfect, right? But leveling it perfectly frequently makes it look crooked relative to the floor and ceiling. Therefore, in order to make it look straight, you must actually hang the picture crooked. Numerical measurements are precise, yes, but they are only one way to achieve accuracy.
A Statistical Gag
All this is why I love to trot out my version of an old joke. Are you ready? Here it goes:
“Of course, 47.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.”
You know the joke has landed when everyone nods a bit in ready agreement and then, seconds later, chuckles. The delivery is key—that slippery “of course,” followed by the precise-sounding decimal. The gag works best if you keep the percentage just below 50% so that it sounds significant but still falls short so that it seems plausible. It's a subtle jab at our tendency to accept numerical claims at face value no matter how dubious they may be.
Try it some time. Maybe the next time you are in a meeting where everyone is furiously scribbling down every number that gets bandied about. Chances are, they'll start jotting down your faux-statistic before you even finish the sentence. It's a great way to snap people out of their numerical trance and get them to actually think about what the numbers mean (or don't mean).
Because at the end of the day, while numbers are vital, numbers are useful, and numbers offer insight into reality that is inaccessible to other forms of analysis, numbers are just one tool in that analytical toolkit. Sometimes the most important things are unquantifiable, which is when we must rely on discernment, intuition, aesthetics, logic, and other more qualitative assessments. Whatever your form of analysis—qualitative, quantitative, or a healthy mix—you must be sure to understand what it all really means.
So if you ever find yourself under the sway of a numbers-obsessed boss or a statistic-spouting pundit, take a step back and ask yourself: what's the real story here? Because I can guarantee you, it's not always the one the numbers are telling.
How well do you understand the numbers you rely on? How effectively do you blend quantitative and qualitative assessments?
Great leaders need to know how to utilize many tools and methodologies, and I can help.
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𝙅𝙞𝙢 𝙎𝙖𝙡𝙫𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙞, 𝙋𝙝.𝘿., 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳, 𝘬𝘦𝘺𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘳, 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘤𝘩, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵. 𝘏𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 30 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘳, 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘏𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘛𝘪𝘯𝘺 𝘏𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘎𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘴. 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘑𝘪𝘮’𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴.
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