Why your best people leave when measurement is broken
High performers leave organizations for a specific reason that rarely shows up in exit interviews. They don’t see the impact of their work. This isn’t about money or titles. It’s about meaning. High performers want to know their effort changes something. They want evidence that their work matters.
When measurement is broken—when organizations track activity instead of outcomes, when feedback is annual instead of continuous, when the connection between effort and impact isn’t visible—talented people become invisible to themselves. They work hard. They produce output. But they can’t see whether any of it moves the needle on what actually matters. Over time, that invisibility becomes suffocating.
The most dangerous part is how this plays out. The person doesn’t leave immediately. They disengage. Their discretionary effort evaporates. They stop pushing for improvement. Within a year, you’ve lost them—either actually or functionally. And you won’t see it coming because your activity metrics look fine. They’re still completing projects. They’re still producing. But the energy is gone.
This is the hidden cost of vague outcomes and weak measurement. You lose your best people because you’ve made it impossible for them to see their impact. Consider what happens instead when measurement is sharp. When outcomes are clear and tracked regularly. When people can see the actual connection between their work and the result.
A product developer understands that their code contributions are connected to the system availability rate that matters to customers. They see that number move. It matters to them. A customer service manager can see that their training investment directly correlates with customer resolution time and satisfaction. It’s visible. It’s real. That visibility is motivating at a level that salary increases often aren’t.
The practical path forward is to involve your high performers in designing the measurement of the work they care about most. Not as busywork. As genuine co-design. What would evidence of real impact look like to them? What changes would signal that their effort mattered?
Then build regular visibility into that measurement. Not annual reviews. Weekly or biweekly check-ins where the data is transparent. Where people can see the trend.
This does something unexpected. It often creates intrinsic motivation where organizational mandates had failed. Because now people can see whether their choices and efforts actually move the metric. They get immediate feedback. They can experiment with what works. They experience agency.
High performers stay in organizations where they can see their impact. The measurement system is often the difference between visibility and invisibility.