133: "Are You a Great Chaser of Vanity Metrics?" ft. Alli Murphy

In this conversation, Erik and returning co-host Alli Murphy unpack a subtle but dangerous pattern in modern leadership: we often reward visibility, speed, and activity instead of real impact.

What starts as a question about “performing busy” quickly expands into a deeper systems-level conversation—how incentive structures, feedback loops, and cultural norms quietly shape behavior (often in the wrong direction).

From sales dashboards to inbox anxiety to creative work being squeezed out by responsiveness, this episode challenges leaders to rethink what they measure, reward, and reinforce—and offers practical ways to start shifting it.

🧭 Conversation Highlights

• The “Performing Busy” Trap
  Teams often optimize for what’s visible—emails sent, meetings held, reports filled—rather than what actually drives outcomes.
• Effectiveness > Efficiency
  Doing more isn’t the goal. Doing what matters is. Leaders must prioritize impact over volume.
• The Power of “So What?”
  Activity without context is meaningless. Communicating impact requires connecting actions to outcomes.
• Systems Shape Behavior
  Incentives, reporting structures, and feedback loops often unintentionally reward the wrong things.
• Change Happens One Conversation at a Time
  Cultural shifts don’t happen through announcements—they happen through repeated, intentional conversations.

💡 Key Takeaways

• You get what you reward—whether you mean to or not
  If you reward responsiveness, you’ll get responsiveness. If you reward impact, you’ll get impact.
• Vanity metrics are seductive—but dangerous
  They’re easy to track, easy to share, and often completely disconnected from real results.
• Clarity beats activity
  The question isn’t “what did you do?”—it’s “what changed because of what you did?”
• Local optimization can break the whole system
  Improving one area in isolation can actually make overall performance worse.
• Leaders must actively deprogram “looking busy” culture
  This takes time, repetition, and individual coaching—not just top-down directives.

❓ Questions That Mattered

• Are we rewarding activity… or actual impact?
• What signals are we unintentionally sending through our systems?
• How do we distinguish between being efficient and being effective?
• What does “so what?” look like in how we communicate our work?
• Where are we optimizing parts of the system at the expense of the whole?

🗣️ Notable Quotes

• “Stop making your reports look longer and start putting things in them that actually matter.”
• “Be more interested in being effective than being efficient.”
• “We did this… so what?”
• “When you optimize each system, you can make the whole system worse.”
• “Looking busy doesn’t make you dollars.”

🔗 Links & Resources

• Listen to other episodes co-hosted with Alli