by John Gross
Answer: Successful businesses! In our complex 24/7 world, the days of being able to only go with your ‘gut’ leads to slower and potentially bad decision making. Not that gut instincts aren’t helpful, but your gut is right a lot more often with supporting metrics.
Additionally, in our information-overloaded world, selecting the right metrics is key for businesses to effectively navigate complexities and make informed decisions that drive success. We need to select the ‘critical few’ metrics that help us predict performance and measure results vs. overloading ourselves with data for the sake of data.
It’s also crucial to create a balance between leading and lagging metrics. Leading metrics indicate performance trends and guide decision making while lagging metrics measure past performance. Striking the right balance enables organizations to see issues and capitalize on opportunities earlier.
Managing your physical weight provides a great example of leading and lagging metrics. Managing your weight is a function of diet and exercise which you measure with a scale. Diet and exercise are leading indicators, and your scale reading is a lagging indicator. If you don’t like the scale’s reading, do you buy a new scale or change your diet and exercise?
Selecting metrics is not enough. You must also continually review and analyze them. For that reason, I prefer a simple, 13-week scorecard so I can see weekly performance and emerging patterns.
Finally, always ask yourself if the metrics are helping you. If the answer is no, then change them.
If you are not using metrics to help manage your business—start! It is amazing how right your gut becomes with a great scorecard.
John Gross is an EOS Implementer who helps businesses achieve Vision, Traction, and Healthy. You can contact John at John@ DrivingChangeInc.com or call 636.667.0579.