OP-ED #17 · Liviu Tudor, President and Founder of Genesis Property
From measuring performance to cultivating human potential
KPIs were one of the most effective tools of the Office Age.
They emerged in a very specific context: a world in which human work was the main source of economic value, and organizations needed clear mechanisms for control, alignment, and optimization.
The problem is not that KPIs are “bad.”
The problem is that they were designed for an age that is coming to an end.
The Age of Becoming fundamentally changes the core question:
- it is no longer “how much do you produce?”,
- it is no longer “how efficient are you?”,
- it is no longer “what is your economic value?”,
but:
“who are you becoming, and what human potential are you cultivating?”
And this question cannot be translated into KPIs.
What KPIs do very well (and why they worked)
KPIs are excellent for:
- repetitive processes,
- clear and finite objectives,
- predictable activities,
- stable environments.
They:
- reduce ambiguity,
- provide fast feedback,
- align teams,
- enable comparison.
In a factory or in a traditional office, the KPI is a logical tool.
Why KPIs become toxic in a post-work world
In the Age of Becoming, three structural incompatibilities emerge.
1. The KPI shifts meaning from the inside to the outside
When people are constantly measured:
- the goal becomes the score,
- motivation becomes extrinsic,
- behavior aligns with the metric, not with meaning.
In a world of becoming, value emerges from:
- exploration,
- risk,
- mistakes,
- slow refinement.
Exactly the things KPIs tend to penalize.
2. KPIs standardize something that is, by definition, unique
Human talents cannot be compared along a single common axis.
A person:
- does not become more valuable because they “produce more,”
- does not evolve linearly,
- does not develop at predictable rhythms.
The Age of Becoming implies:
- individual trajectories,
- different rhythms,
- periods of apparent stagnation,
- unexpected leaps.
KPIs flatten this complexity.
3. KPIs reactivate the ego in a world that is trying to dissolve it
We have already seen that the Age of Becoming implies:
- less comparison,
- the disappearance of status pressure,
- continuous psychological recalibration.
KPIs do the exact opposite:
- they reactivate competition,
- create artificial hierarchies,
- reignite the desire for external validation.
In a post-KPI world, the ego is no longer the engine of progress. It is the residue of a previous age.
From Measurement to Attunement
The Age of Becoming does not eliminate feedback.
It eliminates reductive measurement.
Instead of KPIs, what emerges are:
- frameworks for exploration,
- spaces for reflection,
- contextual feedback,
- personalized guidance assisted by AGI.
We no longer ask:
“did you hit the target?”
but:
- “what did you explore?”
- “what did you learn?”
- “where do you feel you are evolving?”
- “what do you want to deepen?”
This is not a lack of rigor.
It is a higher-order form of rigor.
Why organizations need a different operating system
If KPIs are no longer compatible with the Age of Becoming, the logical question becomes:
by what rules do organizations operate?
The answer is not chaos.
The answer is another type of structure.
This is exactly where the YUNITY Operating System comes in.
Note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools, which were used to structure and refine the content. The ideas and editorial responsibility belong to the author.
