Rule 5 of 13 · Chapter II — Building Measures That Survive Attention
Pair every performance measure with a counterweight that gets worse when the first one is gamed.
Why this rule exists
Almost every shortcut that inflates a number costs something elsewhere: speed bought with rework, volume bought with quality, cost bought with risk. A lone metric hides that trade because the damage lands outside its field of view. A paired measure makes the trade visible without you having to anticipate which specific trick someone will use.
In practice
For each headline measure, ask what you would sacrifice if you had to move it by a third this quarter, then measure that sacrifice too and report the pair side by side on the same page. Handle time pairs with repeat contacts. Throughput pairs with defect escapes. Sales volume pairs with cancellations in the first ninety days. If moving one always moves the other, you have a pair; if they drift independently, your counterweight is not actually sensitive to the gaming route.
When it doesn't apply
Some measures are genuinely one-sided — a safety incident count, a regulatory deadline met — where there is no legitimate trade to surface and inventing a counterweight just adds noise. And do not pair indefinitely: two measures with two counterweights each is already four things nobody reads.