Which Critical Business Metric Will Get Everyone Marching to the Same Beat?

“Com­ing togeth­er is a begin­ning; keep­ing togeth­er is progress, work­ing togeth­er is suc­cess.” — Hen­ry Ford

Is your entire com­pa­ny march­ing to the same beat of the drum? Or is every­one mak­ing their own music as they go?

As sim­ple as it sounds, get­ting peo­ple aligned to focus on a com­mon vision and goal is actu­al­ly straight­for­ward – but it’s extreme­ly rare to find it actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in a com­pa­ny. Lots of peo­ple talk about it – very few can pull it off.

Most peo­ple treat ral­ly­ing themes with a typ­i­cal ​“Rah rah! To the moon!” com­plete with posters and t‑shirts — and three weeks lat­er, no one has a clue what’s happening.

And tra­di­tion­al­ly when an exec­u­tive team goes away on retreat for ​‘strate­gic plan­ning ses­sions’, every­one else won­ders what they’re doing (oth­er than golf­ing and hav­ing a good time). Even if the team works real­ly hard, nobody else ever sees the out­put, and or under­stands the direc­tion. Their dai­ly work doesn’t change – even when dra­mat­ic changes are planned.

All For One

A few years ago, as I was inter­view­ing 50 CEOs around the world for a book project called ​“Scal­ing Up” (an update to the Rock­e­feller Habits), I found that many of them used these quar­ter­ly or annu­al themes, and learned a lot in the many exam­ples they shared.

One of my favourite mech­a­nisms to get peo­ple in a com­pa­ny – whether 30 or 3000 – march­ing to the same beat is some­thing called a Crit­i­cal Num­ber, made pop­u­lar in a book called ​“The Great Game of Busi­ness” by Jack Stack.

In the book, he gives an exam­ple when he went to turn around fac­to­ries. He got the front line peo­ple focused on what mat­ters most, and not only taught them the details of finan­cial state­ments — and how they could impact them — he got them aligned around a com­mon ral­ly­ing cry — a Crit­i­cal Num­ber that every­one drove towards.

This is one of the most effec­tive lead­er­ship and exe­cu­tion tools I know — and it can be a daunt­ing task!

So when we work with com­pa­nies, we make sure we iden­ti­fy a sin­gle Crit­i­cal Num­ber that the exec­u­tive team is engaged around and dri­ving towards – and a tac­ti­cal, oper­a­tional ini­tia­tive to make sure the entire orga­ni­za­tion is aware, and doing their part to make it happen.

Plan for Success

Because we’ve been involved in 100s of suc­cess­ful themes (and some abysmal fail­ures), we know which busi­ness met­rics work and which don’t. Here are exam­ples of some Crit­i­cal Num­ber themes we’ve cho­sen that have had notable impacts on our client’s organizations:

• High Five: Aim­ing for five items or more per transaction
• Route 66: Decrease cash con­ver­sions days from 96 days to under 66, dur­ing the quarter
• 1000 Lit­tle Pieces: Dri­ve sales by ensur­ing each depart­ment is focused on pro­cess­ing 1000 units a day: Sales to sell, pro­duc­tion to make, ship­ping to ship, and account­ing to invoice
• 57 New Friends: Find 57 new cus­tomers over the course of the quarter
• I Love the 90s: Improve mys­tery-shop­ping scores from the low­er 70s to at least 90%
• A Team: Get at least 60% A play­ers on the team by the end of the year
• Bin-It: Elim­i­nate waste­ful actions: things that waste 15 min­utes or 15 euros on a week­ly basis for any­one in the com­pa­ny (The City Bin Co., Ireland)
• 600: Gen­er­ate 600 refer­rals dur­ing the year, from inter­nal staff and exist­ing cus­tomers (ProS­er­vice Hawaii)
• Hap­py Han­dovers: Every cus­tomer is absolute­ly thrilled when they take pos­ses­sion of their apart­ment (mea­sured by the Net Pro­mot­er Scores). (Ashi­ana Hous­ing, India).

All the goals were achieved because every­one was aware of the tar­get, fought to achieve it, and felt like they won when they did.

Build mus­cle

It starts with a great strat­e­gy – and it’s all about dis­ci­pline and phe­nom­e­nal execution.

It doesn’t work because you picked the right num­ber, or because you had a cool name. It works because there’s a dis­ci­pline and rigour to breathe life into it on week­ly basis — so that every­one sees the progress, and feels like they are win­ning. And if they don’t do their part, they are inspired and pulled along by the momen­tum of others.

Week­ly recog­ni­tion or reward is impor­tant. And, at the end, when the goal is achieved, the team – or the whole com­pa­ny — cel­e­brates together.

The ben­e­fit extends beyond the theme time frame because the true val­ue is in the strong mus­cle of align­ment and achieve­ment that the orga­ni­za­tion builds, time after time.

There’s noth­ing like the feel­ing of an orga­ni­za­tion in sync, march­ing to the beat of the same drum – win­ning and get­ting stronger.

PS — We love to help com­pa­nies find, achieve and cel­e­brate their Crit­i­cal Num­bers so if you need help, call us.