top of page

9. Setting Strategic Metrics

Updated: 1 day ago


Graph on dotted paper showing improvement from "Sucking" to "Not Sucking" over time. Pens and ruler on wooden surface. Books in background.

To be confident of your progress toward achieving your organisation’s purpose and motivate the right approach to doing so, it is useful to define metrics and associated targets that drive the organisations efforts.

 

Defining the metrics

 

Thinking directly about your purpose and how you expect to achieve it, the strategic metrics should describe the total organisational performance. They should align all members towards its improvement and ensure all can clearly see their contribution towards this.

 

Metrics can drive behaviour and so we want to leverage this while defining them for the organisation.

 

A common misconception when setting strategic metrics is that they are purely financial however this will not drive positive improvement and growth in a sustainable way.

 

The financial strength of an organisation is purely an outcome of its ability to deliver what people want, when they want it, at a cost they are willing to pay, in the least wasteful way.

 

As you can see below, the quality of your customers experience, the performance and cost of your organisational processes and your teams morale through learning and growth are the key contributing factors to your operational finances and balance sheet and so defining just 3 to 5 strategic metrics around these will be a great starting point.



Setting the targets

 

Strategic level targets should be set for the mid to long term. 3 years is long enough to be aspirational while still being close enough to motivate those accountable for their delivery.

 

Targets are ordinarily set based on what a few leaders believe can be achieved and this is natural – most don’t want to set values that they don’t think can be hit!

 

However, setting targets this way misses the first real opportunity to break the existing paradigms of how leadership think and by extension how work is done.

 

Agreeing what needs to be achieved rather than what can be achieved using existing methods is naturally uncomfortable the first time round but is critical to creating a powerful environment for success

Setting targets that individuals don’t know how to achieve themselves necessitates a move away from directive, top down, leadership to a style that promotes a high trust, highly collaborative, problem-solving approach.

 

It will require leadership to prioritise people and process development, maintaining a strong belief that with the right environment, encouragement and approach, the organisation will rise to the challenge.

 

With the 3 year targets agreed, the first years targets can be derived. Start with 50% of the 3 year targets. Again, this will undoubtedly be a brave approach for the leadership who will be unable to see how to achieve this level of performance.

 

There is often a vast amount of lost potential within organisations, marginalised by well meaning solo endeavour. When this potential is exposed and leveraged, targets previously thought of as unachievable will not only be hit, but be beaten and we will see how to do that during the rest of this series.

 

Achieving Quality, Speed, Cost and People development targets through focussing on productivity and encouraging the participation of all members to support the efforts is exactly the environment we want to encourage. This will totally transform the way you work for the good of the Customer, the employees and the shareholders all at the same time.

Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating

Get Great Business Tips to Your Mailbox. Subscribe.

Thanks for submitting!

© 2035 by Amselina.
Powered and secured by Wix

+44 (0) 7855 013 709

Liverpool

United Kingdom

  • Whatsapp
  • LinkedIn
bottom of page