Metrics

When people joined your organization, your mission and values were a selling point. “Here’s what we stand for. Join us and let’s make the world a better place!” They were motivated, enthusiastic, fully engaged. But the dominant message ever since has been metrics, not mission. “Utilization is too low! WIP (work in progress but not yet billed) is too high! Too much A/R! Not enough backlog!”  GAWD! It stresses me out just writing it.

Are metrics important? Critically! Does focusing the entire organization on metrics actually deliver the better business outcome? Now that’s a very good first-principal’s question.

In the minds of your staff, your organization stands for whatever your leaders talk about most. Metrics or mission? It’s not even close. But to model business outcomes, you'd need to assign a $ value to things like voluntary turnover, increased risk, difficulty of recruiting, average staff quality, frequency of employee issues, lost and missed opportunity costs, apathy, and luck. All are very real and all directly affect the organization's bottom line and trajectory. But because they're impossible to accurately quantify, they don't get a line on the P&L, enabling their financial impact to be set aside.  

Having removed the effects of motivation, what's left is a leader's intuition. Is motivation a factor in an organization's success...when the organization is comprised of humans?  

Most organizations have a mission statement, but are de-facto metrics driven. Hard defensible data pops in every week, leaders feel compelled to talk about it with staff, so it dominates. Culture, mission, and purpose thus defined.

To be mission driven requires top-down direction and the courage to implement what you can't quantify, but your intuition tells you is true. People who care more, deliver better outcomes. People who care less deliver worse outcomes.

Here's how to make your organization more mission driven:

1.    Tell your leaders at every level to talk about the mission more than the metrics, and make sure they do.

2.    Have leaders discuss worrisome metrics only with the individuals who can directly improve them, not the entire staff.

3.    When metrics are discussed, have leaders finish the sentence! That is, frame metrics in the context of the organization's mission, profit and resilience. 'Profit enables investment in the people and resources that deliver the mission. More profit, more mission.' 'People and families rely on this organization. Strong company, more income security.' Finish the sentence by always connecting metrics to the health of the company and its mission. Metrics don't stand alone.

The mission is WHY everyone is here. Metrics enable the mission. Most people really don't care much about 'delivering on the business plan or the quarter', so allowing that to define their work experience is counterproductive.

People throttle their efforts up and down depending on their motivation and willingness to sacrifice. If you believe motivation improves business outcomes, then don't allow an inspiring mission to be supplanted by uninspiring metrics. Human motivation is a soft skill.

Have a great weekend,

Dave

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Email: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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