The new business metrics you need to pay attention to
With recent announcements feeling a bit more positive and the first signs of spring emerging, I’m allowing some cautious optimism to creep in! But there’s still a great deal of uncertainty, and a lot of change still to come right?
If you’re feeling tired, or finding it difficult to get clarity at the end of this very tumultuous time, you’re not alone. Change makes us feel out of control, which in turn makes it very hard to think.
Not just that but significant turmoil or change can make it hard to make sense of your business based on the usual metrics or KPIs. Often the numbers simply don’t make sense when the contextual change is so enormous.
For fast growth or scaling businesses they are, by their very nature, places of immense change. Leading a startup or scaleup will teach you to get comfortable with this. Throw in a massive contextual change though, like Brexit or a global pandemic and the controllables become far fewer.
KPIs have their place, obviously but when you’re in test and learn mode or the business is growing too quickly for the numbers to make sense (especially for other people), or you aren’t in revenue for certain channels yet you need another way to measure your success, highlight gaps and feed your strategy.
The reason we turn to numbers to track business is pretty obvious. They’re hard and fast, easy (ish) to track and ostensibly less open to interpretation than more subjective measures. The reality is though, having run a number of internal business planning processes over the years, I know that numbers are just as fallible as anything else.
Because we think that numbers are more reliable we tend to, well, rely on them more. We leave the less tangible things out of the equation. Unless you’re running something like a pulse survey, in which case you will be asking other people to rate intangibles on a scale - to make it into data.
But somehow we hesitate to do this for ourselves.
But you need to. Because these intangibles, when it comes down to it, can be made tangible by just paying attention to them, breaking them down and thinking about them.
The things that make a difference to how your business runs are the things that are going to make a difference to how it looks and feels.
These are the new metrics you need to measure for yourself. They are
Ease
Stickability
Visibility
Clarity
Ease
If things are difficult in your business - especially things that should be easy - its a very good sign that something isn’t right. It could be that your team are lacking clarity, or roles and responsibilities are lacking definition. It could be that your business has outgrown its processes, or lack thereof.
Ask yourself these questions - score them out of 10.
How easy does it feel to get things done?
How easy is it to understand if things are working well?
Next, think about what would make it a 10. Write those points down.
What actions do you need to take?
Stickability
Strategy and decisions are two key things that need to ‘stick’ in your business. Constantly revisiting either of these things will waste energy, cause frustration and slow things down. A strong decision making process, a well communicated strategy and clear roles and responsibilities relative to those things will ensure things stick.
Ask yourself these questions - score them out of 10.
How well do decisions stick after they’ve been made?
Do things get done as agreed or is there scope creep/timing drift?
Think about what would make those scores a 10.
What actions do you need to take?
Visibility
The extent to which you are visible will have a huge impact on your perceived leadership strength, your insight into how the business is running and the culture you create. Too many leaders go to ground under pressure and tell themselves all sorts of tales about how they’re sorting things out in the background. You need to lead from the front. It’s a common misconception that you can create visibility by chairing things like all hands. It’s so much more than that - you need to be walking the floor, spending time with your team both collectively and individually, challenging visibly, openly making tough decisions and repeating (repeating, repeating) the things that count.
Ask yourself these questions - score them out of 10.
How comfortable are you being visible? e.g. visibly making tough decisions?
How often do you walk the floor? How comfortable does this feel?
Think about what would make those scores a 10.
What actions do you need to take?
Clarity
I loved this LinkedIn post from Stuart Rhys Thomas from Masgroves. Having asked one of their client’s leadership teams whether they believed their team was clear on the business vision and strategy and having received a resounding yes, they went on to ask the whole business what they thought. Turns out only 11% of employees were clear.
This isn’t a huge surprise to me. I see this kind of thing ALL THE TIME. Not only the lack of understanding but the huge gaps in perception over whether people really get it.
Making your vision and strategy both clear and relevant at every level takes time but it is an enormous driver of employee engagement and it makes an enormous difference to how the business runs.
Ask yourself these questions - score them out of 10.
How many people understand the vision and how it relates to them directly? If you don’t know - ask them.
Are you making yourself clear? Do things land as you would expect? Or are you having to make yourself clearer after the fact?
Think about what would make those scores a 10.
What actions do you need to take?
Track these things ongoing and you will build a very clear picture of where the gaps are, where you need to focus your energy and what things are working. Share the metrics with your team, bring them into your reflections, ask them the same questions and you will gain a level of insight that no numbers on a page will ever give you.
If you use this process and find it helpful, I’d love to know so please drop me a line. Tell me what’s worked? What insights you’ve gained.
Would you like to track these things ongoing? You should! Why not download the cheatsheet.
