Redefining Performance: What Are We Really Measuring?

What exactly is performance?

This second article in the two-part series by Camille Rabier from 21^st Century, Rethinking Fairness and Performance, builds on Part 1 by asking the prior question: what, exactly, should count as performance? It argues that sustainable performance cannot be reduced to outputs alone but must include the behaviours and conditions that make results repeatable, resilient, and organisation-enhancing over time.

At its core, performance should be understood as an organisation’s ability to sustain itself: to deliver consistently and reliably without degrading the system that makes those results possible over time.

Yet, in practice, performance is rarely understood this way. It is seen as an outcome - arguably the most visible and measurable one.

Many organisations even elevate it to the status of a value, sometimes explicitly, but more often through familiar phrases such as ‘high performance’ or ‘performance-driven culture’.

In doing so, they blur a critical distinction: outcomes are mistaken for the principles that should guide how they are achieved, becoming the primary standard against which performance is assessed.

In turn, performance becomes defined by what is most easily measured, often without equal regard for how it is achieved. As a result, it is measured, rewarded, and compared primarily through visible outputs, collapsing a complex system of behaviours into a single indicator: results.

When performance is reduced to what can be measured through outputs alone, it reflects what has been delivered, but not how it was produced, nor whether it can be sustained.

Not all performance is equal

The same observable and measurable results can be achieved in very different ways.

A team may deliver strong outcomes by building capability, sharing and creating knowledge, and improving how work flows over time. Alternatively, it may achieve those same outcomes by overextending individuals, withholding information, or prioritising short-term delivery at the expense of long-term stability.

In both cases, the outcome appears identical, at least on paper, yet the underlying performance is not: one strengthens the system and builds capacity for future performance, while the other extracts from it and depletes it.

Yet most performance systems do not distinguish between the two. Outcomes are treated as equivalent because it is outcomes that are ultimately measured.

What gets rewarded shapes behaviour

When performance is defined purely through outputs, it has important consequences and begins to shape behaviour.

Activities that contribute directly to measurable results are prioritised, while those that sustain the system become secondary. Supporting others, sharing context, mentoring, and exercising judgement may still be valued informally, but they are rarely decisive in evaluation.

Over time, these behaviours begin to diminish - not because individuals reject them, but because they are not reinforced by the system.

People respond rationally to what is measured and rewarded and allocate their time and effort accordingly.

As a result, behaviours that sustain performance in the longer term are gradually deprioritised in favour of those most directly linked to measurable outcomes, even when those behaviours undermine future performance.

Why values struggle to influence performance

As performance systems prioritise measurable outputs, the behaviours that sustain performance remain weakly defined and inconsistently assessed.

Organisations often assume that their value systems will guide behaviour and support long-term value creation. While this is directionally sound and reflects an understanding that how work is done matters, values rarely translate into how performance is actually measured, because they remain broadly defined, open to interpretation, and weakly connected to evaluation.

In practice, values signal intent, but lack evaluative weight as they are not designed to function as criteria. Performance systems require precision: criteria that can be observed, assessed, compared, and defended. Requirements, that values, in their abstract form, do not meet. As a result, they cannot be used reliably in performance evaluation. What cannot be evaluated cannot be applied consistently or carry consequence.

Therefore, when trade-offs arise, it is not values that guide behaviour, but the system in place: what is measured and rewarded simply takes precedence.

When individuals face choices between delivering results and supporting others, speed and judgement, or short-term delivery and long-term sustainability, they adapt by prioritising what is rewarded. This is a rational response to the signals embedded in the system: measurable results consistently win, reinforcing the same cycle over time.

This leaves behaviour recognised as critical to performance, yet largely absent from evaluation. As a result, performance is assessed only partially, capturing what is visible, but not necessarily what is valuable or sustainable.

The paradox

This creates a structural paradox within organisations.

On the one hand, performance increasingly depends on behaviours such as knowledge sharing, co-creation, judgement, collaboration, and the ability to navigate ambiguity, especially as work becomes more interdependent and complex.

Yet, on the other hand, systems continue to reward what is most visible and directly measurable: outputs - while largely ignoring the behaviours that sustain them.

The system, in effect, selects for behaviours that maximise short-term performance while deselecting those that sustain it over time.

Initially, this may look like success, as output increases and delivery accelerates. But beneath the surface, capability is not built, knowledge does not compound, and trust erodes.

An organisation that achieves results at the cost of its own capability, resilience, or trust is not truly performing; it is undercutting itself, as performance becomes extractive rather than generative.

Reframing performance

This requires a critical shift.

Performance cannot be understood purely through outputs. It must reflect the behaviours through which those outputs are achieved.

Nor should performance be optimised directly. It should be understood as the result of a system of behaviours, decisions, and conditions interacting over time.

To influence performance, that system must be deliberately designed so that behaviour is not adjacent to performance, but part of it.

Organisations must first define what performance is and what drives it, and only then can it be meaningfully measured.

When organisations focus primarily on optimising outputs, they risk leaving the system that produces them only partially defined, resulting in a view of performance that is incomplete and difficult to sustain.

Performance, in this sense, becomes harder to repeat, less meaningful, and increasingly fragile over time, ultimately weakening organisational sustainability. Not all performance is equal, and not all performance lasts.

Total Words: 1036