An unfortunate consequence of the highly metric driven world we live in is that the big picture people seem to only have a big picture with respect to the metrics.
I worked in Apple retail way back when, and had a co-worker who was the absolute best "customer service" person I have ever worked with. They had an unnatural ability to make anyone both calm and if not happy, then at least open to talking. Our store was 45 feet from front to back and on multiple occasions I watched them intercept an angry customer who had practically torn the door from its hinges walking in and by the time they'd reached the back where the "Genius Bar" was, they'd gotten the customer cooled down and in many cases actually smiling and laughing. As the retail management became more and more metric focused, they were constantly in the lower rankings for metrics, and yet I argued to anyone I could that they were an essential part of what made our store work and we needed to keep them around regardless of their metrics. Eventually I left because of the ever increasing focus on metrics, and a few months later I heard from them that they'd also been let go for failing to meet metric targets. The few occasions I've been back to my old store, the lack of happy or at least content people waiting around for their turn for service has been noticeable (at least to me in comparison).
I've seen things similar to this play out multiple times over my career. Too strong a focus on numbers and "objective" measurements, and not enough focus on soft skills and overall cohesion and how people fit into their teams. A team of 3 10x developers that don't mesh well on their own with a 1x developer who keeps them all working together smoothly by being a "glue" person is worth more than a team of 4 10x developers that only mesh ok. Everyone I've ever talked to in life understands this concept, and can easily think of examples from their own life. Yet somehow the lesson flies out the window anytime it comes to making hiring / promotion / firing decisions. I think people are afraid to make decisions like that which they can't back up with cold hard numbers, and while there's good reasons to want objective numbers for these decisions and avoid appearances of bias and favoritism, we lose a lot if we only ever focus on the tiny slivers of things which we are currently objectively measuring.
I worked in Apple retail way back when, and had a co-worker who was the absolute best "customer service" person I have ever worked with. They had an unnatural ability to make anyone both calm and if not happy, then at least open to talking. Our store was 45 feet from front to back and on multiple occasions I watched them intercept an angry customer who had practically torn the door from its hinges walking in and by the time they'd reached the back where the "Genius Bar" was, they'd gotten the customer cooled down and in many cases actually smiling and laughing. As the retail management became more and more metric focused, they were constantly in the lower rankings for metrics, and yet I argued to anyone I could that they were an essential part of what made our store work and we needed to keep them around regardless of their metrics. Eventually I left because of the ever increasing focus on metrics, and a few months later I heard from them that they'd also been let go for failing to meet metric targets. The few occasions I've been back to my old store, the lack of happy or at least content people waiting around for their turn for service has been noticeable (at least to me in comparison).
I've seen things similar to this play out multiple times over my career. Too strong a focus on numbers and "objective" measurements, and not enough focus on soft skills and overall cohesion and how people fit into their teams. A team of 3 10x developers that don't mesh well on their own with a 1x developer who keeps them all working together smoothly by being a "glue" person is worth more than a team of 4 10x developers that only mesh ok. Everyone I've ever talked to in life understands this concept, and can easily think of examples from their own life. Yet somehow the lesson flies out the window anytime it comes to making hiring / promotion / firing decisions. I think people are afraid to make decisions like that which they can't back up with cold hard numbers, and while there's good reasons to want objective numbers for these decisions and avoid appearances of bias and favoritism, we lose a lot if we only ever focus on the tiny slivers of things which we are currently objectively measuring.