Surrogation

Surrogation bias is the phenomenon of becoming fixated on the measures of an activity, rather than on the activity itself. Most of us have had the experience in life of having a parent or boss who seems fixated on external details while ignoring the actual point of an activity. For instance, a customer service manager can become so obsessed wth the statistics that deal with customer satisfaction that they lose track of the importance of customer satisfaction itself, which is the entire point of their position.