Remember when we wrote in an earlier newsletter of the need for every leader to know what 'tools' are in his Leadership Toolkit? Well another one to add to yours is that of "Understanding and defining your metrics". Everything we do can be measured in one form or another. We often hear that 'what gets measured, gets delivered' and to be honest there is a lot of truth in that. However are you measuring the right things?
Metrics not only give you feedback on how things are going but also stimulate the right discussions about what you are trying to achieve as well as provide the criteria for your decisions.
We recently worked with a team doing a project to revamp a school classroom into a library to encourage reading and improve literacy. However we wondered if at the end of the day the team had given themselves the right metric of success - things like staying in the budget, meeting the time frame and getting 50 books were all good tangible targets but not really the 'metric of success'.
The ultimate outcome of success is improved literacy. In order to achieve this, the true metric of success for the project should have been sustainable utilisation of the library. That captures the essence of what the team wanted to successfully deliver, rather than just the project tasks and milestones that need to be achieved to meet the task needs. You can see that the discussion in the team would expand, not just covering the sourcing of books but also covering the type of books they need to source (which books will increase utilisation of the library) and even the comfort levels of furniture provided. Choosing the right metric will therefore expand the discussion to all facets of the library upgrade.
In all the activities you undertake always make sure you know (and agree) up front what ultimate metric of success would be, rather than just the project milestones. This becomes a key tool for you as a leader as all your decisions can be reflected against the ultimate metric to check for priority and impact . This will ensure you stay focused on the end result and will help ensure you are successful as a leader. It also helps avoid unnecessary work and possible frustration amongst team members as your leadership direction you give will be consistent with the ultimate metric.
Key take-outs:
- Know your team ultimate metric of success
- Don't confuse project tasks and steps with the ultimate metric
- Keep building your Leadership toolkit, know what you have in it and how to use the tools