Gaming Is Information, Not Misconduct
The response to being measured tells you something about the measure. Treating it as a conduct problem loses the information.
When people optimise a measure, the common reaction is to tighten enforcement. That addresses the symptom and discards the most useful signal available.
The practical lesson in “Gaming Is Information, Not Misconduct” is to connect every number to a decision and retain the context behind it. Teams exploring mouse jiggler detection can review the official website as one source of operational evidence, provided the purpose is disclosed and the interpretation is tested with the people affected.
What gaming tells you
That the measure does not match the work, in the view of the people doing it.
For an independent perspective related to “Gaming Is Information, Not Misconduct”, consult the Harvard Business Review productivity collection; it offers a useful external check on definitions, governance and the assumptions built into a proposed measure.
That the easiest route to a better number is not the route you intended.
And that the consequence attached is large enough to be worth responding to.
Three findings, free, from watching the behaviour.
Why people are usually right
The person splitting work into smaller units knows the unit was never comparable.
The person closing tickets early knows the measure ignores whether it recurred.
They are responding accurately to a measure that is inaccurate, which is the opposite of the usual interpretation.
The enforcement response
Rules against splitting, audits of closures, minimum durations.
Each spawns a new workaround and a new rule.
And the team now spends attention on compliance rather than on work, which costs more than the original distortion.
What to do instead
Ask what the measure is missing.
Usually the answer is specific and fixable: add a counterweight, change the unit, exclude a category, measure at a different level.
The conversation takes an hour and resolves what enforcement cannot.
The uncomfortable version
Sometimes the answer is that the measure cannot be fixed because the work has no comparable unit.
In which case the gaming is telling you to stop using it, which the knowledge section argues at length.
Distinguishing gaming from fraud
Gaming is optimising within the rules toward a measure.
Fraud is falsifying the record.
The second is a conduct matter and is rare; conflating them makes the first impossible to discuss honestly, and losing that discussion costs you the information.
Creating the conditions to hear about it
Ask, periodically and without consequence: what would you have to do to make this number go up without doing better work?
People answer this honestly when nothing hangs on it.
And the answers are a list of your measure's weaknesses, produced by the people best placed to know them.
The general position
A measure that is gamed widely is a measure that is wrong.
The response is to change the measure, not the people.
Which is uncomfortable for whoever chose it, and is the only thing that works.
What to check
Where do you see optimisation toward your measures?
Has anybody asked the team what the measure is missing?
Is gaming treated as information or as conduct?
And could somebody tell you honestly how to inflate your figures?