15 Oct 2025
The business world’s emphasis on KPIs often clashes with the caring values of professions like veterinary medicine. Gemma Barmby explores how to shift away from cold, numbers-driven targets toward a more meaningful, purpose-led approach…
Gemma Barmby
Job Title
Image: beast01 / iStock
There’s a well-known business adage: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Its truth is often debated, but its influence remains strong – especially in how we assess performance.
Yet, recently, there’s been growing resistance, with high-profile critiques highlighting the downsides of an overemphasis on metrics, financial targets and KPIs.
In many veterinary teams, whether small animal, farm, equine or exotics, the mere mention of “KPIs” can trigger eye rolls or quiet resistance. They’re often seen as cold, number-driven tools, seemingly at odds with the caring values that drew us into the profession in the first place.
But here’s the reality: while we entered this field to care for animals, veterinary practices are also businesses, and like any living system, they need ways to track, reflect and adapt. As veterinary surgeons, and nurses, we regularly measure parameters like temperature, heart rate and blood glucose, not for their own sake, but because they help guide care.
These numbers are vital signs – data with meaning. So maybe the issue isn’t measurement itself, but what we choose to measure – and why.
Let’s reframe KPIs, not as detached business tools, but as vital signs for the health of the practice. Just as patients deserve thoughtful monitoring, so do our teams, our systems and our outcomes.
There’s another quote that captures this perfectly – Goodhart’s Law:
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
This speaks to what many of us instinctively feel. When KPIs become the goal rather than the guide, we risk distorting behaviour, losing sight of our values and measuring the wrong things entirely.
From a clinical lens: if a patient’s glucose is low, we don’t chase a number just to “hit a target”. We investigate the cause, intervene meaningfully and aim to restore health.
The low reading is just a signal that something isn’t functioning as it should. Metrics should point toward better outcomes – not become the outcome themselves.
Before setting any measures, we must ask certain questions. What are we trying to achieve? Why does it matter? How will things be better if we succeed?
This clarity helps define meaningful success and ensures the indicators we choose truly reflect the progress we care about. Equally important is communicating this to our teams – metrics only make sense when everyone understands the shared goal they support.
Let’s return to our metaphor: a practice is like a body. A healthy body depends on healthy organs and in a veterinary practice, those core “organs” could be considered as:
Yes, you could argue that some are more vital than others, but, in reality, all four must function well for the whole system to thrive. If one fails, the others suffer, too.
Some metrics are easier to track (like turnover or profit), but that doesn’t make them more important. Client satisfaction, team well-being and clinical standards are just as critical to long-term success and are equally measurable – we just need to be more deliberate in how we track them.
Much of the data we need already exists, it just needs translating into something meaningful.
Gathering data is just the beginning. The real power lies in how we use it; regularly, contextually and with purpose. One useful framework is OKRs (objectives and key results):
Objective. What are we trying to achieve? Why is it important?
Key results. What does success look like?
KPIs. How will we measure progress toward those results?
Technically, OKRs and KPIs are separate tools, but blending them together shows how we can move away from a number-focused approach to an outcome-focused, data-informed approach.
The key message is to start with the “why,” not the figures. We don’t retrofit meaning to metrics. We start with meaning and choose metrics that help us stay aligned with it.
If we want our teams to care about what’s being measured, they need to be involved in shaping it. When people understand the goal, why it matters and how success will be measured, they’re more engaged.
When they’ve helped define those goals, ownership and accountability increase dramatically. Involving the team surfaces the on-the-ground insights that improve decision-making and help address real issues. It transforms the narrative from something “management imposes” to something we build together.
The data backs this up:
Those are some powerful wins. Well beyond the original goals.
One common pitfall: data overload. When we try to track everything, we end up focusing on nothing. Teams get overwhelmed, priorities blur, and decision-making stalls.
Instead, pick three key objectives. List the success measures for each. Then identify the handful of KPIs that will help you track progress. Keep it clear, simple and regularly reviewed.
Also, be kind to yourself – and your team – about the results. It’s human nature to fixate on the gaps. But if you improved your debt level by £7,000 instead of £10,000 or raised your NPS by 10 points instead of 15, that’s still real progress. So, celebrate it.
And if you exceed your targets? That’s cause for an even bigger celebration.
KPIs aren’t the problem. It’s how we use them – and whether we connect them back to purpose – that truly matters.
When we shift from compliance-driven KPIs to purpose-led CarePIs, we move:
When we involve the team in deciding what we measure and why, we dissolve the stigma around data and targets. We build a culture of understanding, commitment and shared purpose.
And most importantly, we stay true to why most of us entered this profession: to provide the best possible care for animals. Thoughtful measurement helps us prove we’re doing that – and shows us how we can do it even better.
Gemma Barmby qualified from the RVC in 2014 and has undertaken many roles in the small animal veterinary world, including clinical coach, new graduate mentor and clinical director. Gemma joined Vet Dynamics in 2021 after realising her purpose was in developing teams and practices. She is also a director for the VMG.
