Once upon a time, an analyst was working with a team on a business problem. The team was tasked with improving the delivery velocity for drivers in vans dropping off packages. The goal was to improve quality with faster average delivery times, thus resulting in more packages delivered per driver per day. The measurement for success was simple. “Lower average delivery time.”

Well, an idea was proposed during a brainstorming session. After all, “there are no bad ideas while brainstorming.” And an idea was workshopped, “What if the delivery drivers didn’t wear seatbelts?”

Now the analyst was a little concerned about this. Not only being illegal, it also raised serious safety and ethical concerns. But the business team was hyper-focused on their single metric for success: “Lower average delivery time.” Despite all the analyst’s pleas and logical arguments, the project team moved forward with this idea. And sure enough, when drivers did not wear their seatbelts it took an average for 30-45 seconds off each delivery. Given 10,000 drivers each making 30 stops a day, this saved thousands of hours per day! The project team were heroes!

You may look at the above and say, oh that’s ridiculous. That would never happen. To which I ask, why not? Where’s the guardrail?

Oh, something bad will happen, you say? Well, let me continue the story. The company rolled out the new effort. For twelve months, no drivers were pulled over and given traffic tickets, and no traffic accidents occurred so there were no injuries. The company was saving millions of dollars. Success was claimed. And the analyst? Well, their pushback during the project was remembered, and their career never recovered.

It’s an analogy.