@navigium goodhart's law in action?
I've got to imagine this started with someone in the C-suite saying anything below a 9 is unacceptable.
Semi-related:
At an old job, when they rolled out a new performance evaluation system, designed to "inflation" by changing all ratings to "fails to meet/meets/exceeds expectations" applied over several categories, with the intent most people are rated "meets expectations".
During the meeting announcing this, one of the supervisors says: "what do I put if I expect all of my employees to exceed expectations?"
I made a mental note to never work for them.
Exactly. He couldn't understand that contradiction when someone questioned him on it.
What I heard was that his employees are only successful if they do more than what he asks them to do. Seems like a pretty toxic attitude in my mind.
Not that different from "only a 9 or 10 is acceptable"