A public good is non-excludable (you can't stop people using it) and non-rivalrous (one person using it doesn't reduce it for others).
Street lighting. Disease surveillance. Navigation charts.
The market under-provides these. That's the original reason government exists: to provide what markets won't.
"We think we contributed, but we're not certain."
That's not a weak evaluation. That's an honest one.
The rigorous version of claiming impact has three checks: would it have happened anyway? Who did you measure? What else changed at the same time?
Vanity metrics feel good. They're easy to increase, hard to interpret, and rarely connected to whether the service is working.
The test for any metric: what decision would be different if this number went up?
If the answer is nothing, it might be a vanity metric.
The cobra effect: a policy designed to solve a problem that makes it worse by changing the incentives.
Every organisation has one.
Before you set a target, ask: how might someone reasonably game this? The answer often redesigns the metric before it causes harm.
Incentives shape behaviour more reliably than values or instructions do.
If the system rewards activity over outcomes, you'll get activity. If it rewards compliance over judgement, you'll get compliance.
The uncomfortable question: what does your system actually reward?
Most risk management is actually worst-case management.
We imagine the bad scenario and design to prevent it. Useful. But used alone, it makes organisations over-cautious and slow.
Expected value thinking asks a different question: across all plausible outcomes, what do we get on average? That's a different frame, and it often leads to a different decision.
What decision are you making based on worst case alone?
Little's Law in plain English: the more work you start, the slower everything gets.
Not because the team got worse. Because the system got fuller.
Reducing work in progress is often more effective than adding capacity. Most teams resist this, starting feels like progress. Finishing is what actually matters.
What's your team's WIP limit?
A moat in public services isn't about profit. It's about why your service can do something no one else can replicate at the same cost, quality, or reach.
Network effects. Switching costs. Data accumulated over time. Regulatory position. Most services have one of these. Few capitalise on it deliberately.
What's your service's sustainable advantage?
Strategy means deciding what you won't do.
Most services try to serve everyone and end up serving no one well. A position only exists if it involves trade-offs. 'Everything's a priority' is not a strategy. It's a sign nobody's made a choice yet.
What has your service consciously decided NOT to do?
A metric improved after a change. Did the change cause it?
Three questions worth asking before taking credit:
1. Would it have improved anyway? Trends and seasonality move metrics independently.
2. Who are you measuring? Opt-in groups aren't representative.
3. What else changed? Feature releases, comms, policy shifts can all be the driver.
The honest answer: we think we contributed, but we're not certain. That's more credible than false certainty.
Simon Whatley