What it should be: Hitting measures -> Accomplishing goals
What it is in a lot of the corporate world: Goal is to -> hit measures
This is one of my biggest pet peeves of the corporate world. We get these scorecards we have to hit, and we do whatever it takes to hit the scorecard measures… not the goal of the project.
Nice post by Seth Godin illustrates this:
Avoiding False Metrics – Seth Godin