We’ve learned to measure success by numbers. Want to know whether a feature is successful? A/B test it. Was an ad successful? There are campaign metrics for that. Is a company successful? The numbers in the P&L statement and balance sheet should provide the answer. It seems that success can be defined by numbers.

But strong metrics and big numbers often give the false impression of success — you may have a galloping horse but is it galloping in the direction you want? Is your “successful” company, product, or feature making the world a little more like the one you want to live in?

Today the universally accepted model for building products is Build, Test, Learn, Scale. This model of building products means success is determined by usage metrics. We optimize to maximize the number of customers, usage, engagement, or revenue. The success of our product is thus conflated with product usage.

Hypermetricemia: a rampant disease

Facebook illustrates this point particularly well. Going by the numbers, Facebook’s model has been a tremendous success. At 2.7 billion users, its reach rivals that of any of the major religions. Even the average time spent on Facebook, 20 min per day, borders on the religious. But Facebook’s scale of influence has come with several unintended consequences. The proliferation of fake news and its effect on democracy, conflict and human health have been in the public eye recently.

We catch hypermetricemia when we focus on popular metrics to determine success, without giving sufficient thought to whether metrics indicate progress towards the vision.

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, criticized the company at SXSW for “deflecting us away from the core problem” instead of tackling issues in earnest. Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have continued to be more focused on moving metrics up and to the right than addressing the growing problems in their business model. This is typical of the product disease, Hypermetricemia.

But in defense of Facebook, it’s easy to catch Hypermetricemia. As a business leader you’re under pressure to show growth. In the world of startups, vanity metrics such as venture capital investment raised, growth rate, or even the number of media mentions can become misleading indicators of the success of our product. These are examples of Hypermetricemia that we have experienced ourselves.

Hypermetricemia is curable

The cure to Hypermetricemia starts with the acknowledgement that products can’t justify their own existence — even when they’re used by almost a third of humanity. Our current model of building products (Build, Test, Learn, Scale), misses an important first step: defining the change you want to create in this world. Your product is your vehicle to create that change and the success of your product is determined by whether it helps you achieve what you set out to in the first place. Numbers help you measure success, but only when those metrics are indicators of progress towards achieving the desired impact.

Hypermetricemia makes it easy to follow profits down dark alleys and dead ends. Profit should help sustain your vision, not lead it.

Facebook’s mission was to make the world more open and connected. In 2017, that mission statement was updated to “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” But what’s missing is a more actionable picture of what this world should look like. You need to be able to see the end state in your vision so that you can create that world.

In practical terms, when you have a clear vision, you can define a strategy that aligns with that vision. You can then craft a roadmap to execute that strategy and work through the hypotheses and metrics that you want to test through your everyday activities. Without this clarity of vision, every metric seems like the right one to measure.

We can only create a world that we can see clearly in our minds. We need to be able to hallucinate our vision.

Before you embark on the journey of Build, Test, Learn and Scale, start by defining a compelling vision. Your vision statement must define your impact (i.e. whose world are you changing and why) and your product (how you’re going to changing their world).

We’ve found that it’s hard to create such a vision starting with a blank sheet of paper — it’s easy to get stuck in the words. We’ve developed a simple mad lib version of such a vision statement to help you create a distinction between your impact and your product. Think of this as the “source code” for your vision — it’s not a catchy tagline, but it’s actionable for you and your team in your everyday activities.

The process of Build, Test, Learn and Scale, can give you a galloping horse. But when you define the impact you want to create through your product, you grab hold of the reins and set the direction. Only then can you measure the success of your features, products, and company.

They’re successful if they make the world a little more like the one you want to live in.

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Radhika Dutt is a product leader and entrepreneur who the author of Radical Product on Medium. Radical Product is a movement of leaders creating vision-driven change—you can download the free Radical Product Toolkit, designed as a step-by-step guide to make it easy and practical to apply product thinking.