Pick the right metric to incentivize the behavior you want
theeffectiveengineer.com
theeffectiveengineer.com
The vague statement, "the shift in metric played a huge role in aligning the company’s focus," seems at odds with the article's emphasis on metrics. Let's get some measurement of the effect of the metric.
I imagine that the metric change from profit per store to profit per visit was just part of a bureaucratic shift in the way Walgreens divided territory among managers.
I think it's like averted vision: the point is to achieve profit long-term, but you have to focus on profit per visit to get there.
Regardless, as a customer, I don't want every employee focused on ripping me off, which is what I assume it can degenerate to.
Basically, their strategy is to saturate the market, and they don't care if they steal sales or cannibalize their own sales. They're maximizing profit per customer visit, but ignoring customer visits per store per week?
A point in your favor though, The author is pretty new. This being his second blog post.