Vanity counts that look like health
A vanity count is a number that rises when the organisation is busy and falls when nobody is looking at the definition. Badge totals, undifferentiated “activity,” and summed pipeline without stage exits are frequent guests on executive canvases because they are easy to extract.
In a KPI definition workshop we ask for a floor counter-example. If nobody can describe the last time the number went the “wrong” way for a good reason, it is decoration. Cross-functional reporting has to survive a sceptic from another department. Decoration does not.
Replacing a vanity count is politically harder than drawing it. Someone’s monthly story is attached. The honest move is demotion: keep the count in an appendix with its owner, and put a slower, owned measure on the first page. The sitting will be quieter and shorter.
We also refuse to dress record-keeping software as a market, a wallet, or a place where value is held. Figures on a canvas are descriptions of work already done or still stuck. They are not instructions to transact.