Using Metrics to Define Success
If you’ve ever played golf, you’ve probably noticed that you record your score every 15 minutes or so, at the end of every hole. If you watch baseball, you’ll notice that they measure everything all the time. In the industrial economy, everything was measured on an ongoing basis, as is everything in the service economy today. As for the knowledge economy, we aren’t that good at measuring things.
Link to Strategy
The purpose of a good metrics program is to link the company’s strategy to the daily action of all employees. By having metrics in place, an employee will be able to focus on what matters and actually know what needs to be done on a daily basis for the firm to be successful.
What Metrics Do You Need?
You need metrics that measure individual and corporate activities and their results that tie into the company’s strategic plan. You also need metrics that measure relationships with stakeholders, customers, and employees. These can be summarized in three groupings: Activities, Outcomes, and Satisfaction.
Activities lead to outcomes that result in satisfaction. If you’ve really done a good job with these, you’ll figure out a causal relationship between the three.
Look at the slide deck on your left for a more in depth look at metrics.