[Verse 1 – KPI Theatre] KPI short-sight, tightened vision over widesky insight, Numbers bite bright light till night hides real life. Targets taxidermy outcomes, impact stuffed, glass-eyed, Tick-box liturgy, glittery dashboards baptise. Case notes coded to quotas, soul triaged to a queue, “Throughput” worshipped; who’s soothed? Mostly the review. When measure becomes treasure, you bury the map, We chase rate-cards, not lives; the compass collapses to stats. League-table theatre, grant-season necromancy, Anecdotes amputated, nuance bled for fancy. Short grant, long harm, programmes turned machines, Clean KPIs, unseen streets, grief in the seams. Staff grow moral calluses, clients conditioned to perform, Scripting in the survey, storms dressed as “norm.” Goodhart groans in the rafters, laughing at our ledger, “Manage for what matters” - not the metricised measure. [Hook] Count what counts; let the counted not be crowns. Aim at change, not the chart or else the truth drowns. [Verse 2 – P-Value Pantomime] Scientism poses as science, lab-coat pantomime, P value peekaboo, HARKing past the line. Pal-review oligarchy, replication in sight? Evidence ornaments objective, not steering bike with insight. We sandbox the wild with an RCT fence, Then declare the desert tidy, mistaking clean for common sense. Effects shrink at scale; context flips the sterilised sign, What works in a ward warp in universal brine. KPI karaoke: sing along, same refrain, “Significant,” “efficient,”, "valid?" significanct impact drains. Data dredged for a pearl, publishing what will please, File-drawer forest archives hide inconvenient trees. Audit the ladder while the building is being burned, Outputs overweighted, outcomes overturned. Wisdom without feedback is theatre without light, Knowledge needs friction, not rubber-stamped oversight. [Hook] Count what counts; let the counted count, not crowns. Aim at change, not the chart or else the truth drowns. [Verse 3 – Incentive Hygiene] Open the vaults, shared data, guardrails tight, Privacy-preserving linkages, least-privilege rights. Differential veils, federated learning to convene, Community-owned schemas define what “impact” means. Mixed-methods compass, stories braided with stats, Long arcs tracked softly; short spikes fade fast. Incentive hygiene: reward course-correction, Fund the null result; pay for honest reflection. Peer-review in the sunlight; prereg plans in the clear, Reability to re-use, reproduce; re-analyse, no fear. Dashboards as dashboards, not deities to appease, Decision logs public, with “WHY”s aired to breathe. Measure to learn, not to punish or parade, Let failure be compost where better practice is made. Put care at the centre, with time as a metric too, Build systems that listen, cultivate garden to bloom through. [Hook] Count what counts; let the counted not be crowns. Aim at change, not the chart or else the truth drowns.
