Find Your One Number (But!)
I stole the idea of “one number” from the movie Moneyball. (I didn’t read the book.) In it, the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane, hires Peter Brand, a nerdy numbers freak who analyzed the game of baseball with stats and science while others still trusted their guts and talked with superstition around every corner.
Brand showed Beane to select members of his baseball team by figuring out one stat only: OBA - on base average. How often did this player get on base when they were up to bat?
This was made even more tricky by the fact it didn’t matter how many home runs the player had, not even a big deal if he HIT onto base or got walked when a pitcher messed up against him. The one number, completely, was “how often does this player get on base when they are in a game?”
That method was what eventually led the Boston Red Sox to win a World Series after an 86 year drought. (The Oakland A’s didn’t win the World Series with that method, but they won something like 20 games in a row with it.)
Find Your One Number
A few months back, I entered a “sleep study” program at my local hospital. My doc had a suspicion that a few of my other problems I was dealing with might come from sleep issues and he wanted to rule it out. The study uncovered quite a whopper of a “one number.”
Every night (for probably the last five years), I was being interrupted and woken up ever hour. The study people told me that someone dealing with sleep apnea might be woken as much as 1-15 times an hour. They ranked it “severe” if you were waking up as much as 30 times an hour (That’s every 2 minutes, you’re woken from sleep). I was being woken up 71 times an hour every hour.
So there’s a number.
I have this nifty cpap machine now. It’s a mask and an oxygen delivery system and now guess what my “one number” is in the wake-up department: 1.6 an hour. (Clearly, it’ll be a better world when I don’t get waken up for a few hours at a time, but after five years of waking up every 48 seconds? I’ll take it.). So that’s the “one number” that made the difference for me.
Since fixing that, I feel my energy coming back (I’ve put on SO much weight). I feel mental clarity getting better (didn’t know it wasn’t, but okay). I feel better every single day on an upward curve.
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But That Means Something Else
In the Moneyball example, their OBA “one number” would work forever. The same mechanic: on base average, is going to work just fine for their needs. But that’s not always the case.
The “one number” that got me here: times woken up per hour - isn’t the one that will get me further, because once I have that mastered and back to “normal,” I will have the power to take on the challenges that put me in this situation to begin with (overweight).
Thus, my NEW “one number” shifts to “time spent on foot.” This counts walking and standing desk time and anything that’s going to start the old calorie burning process to shed off all this excess material I’ve collected.
After a while, I’ll shift that number to something else more permanent than that. I don’t know the number yet. But I’ll find a way to boil the ocean on all my efforts to one number to track and influence.
Apply This to Work
There’s a “one number” you can look for in any business or role you have. In my old role, it was around getting people to try our sample products. In your world, it might be down to “sales conversations” or “project check-ins” or even something a bit esoteric like “concepts transferred” (A CEO might measure this against how many of her executive and senior team are on the exact same page as she).
A number like this has to be something you can work to influence. There are many ways I can influence “time spent on foot,” like setting timers to get me standing more often, and scheduling walk breaks, and walking during meetings. I can do a LOT to influence that number.
Make sure your work number is that way, too. If you were an author, “reviews received” isn’t really a great “one number.” BUT you could do “reviews solicited,” and make it that you ask people for reviews because of how they influence people’s purchasing choices. You have to be able to impact the one number or it’s not all that useful to track. It’d be like tracking the weather. One is a goal and the other is a data point. See the difference?
So what would YOUR number be? Share it below. Maybe we’ll get some insights from each other.
Read the book. So fun
Writer, Editor, Research Maven, and Content Strategist
2 年Love this idea, Chris — and glad you're getting your health issues sorted. Your example from Moneyball (one of my favorite books) reminds me of another sports example, one from the 1990s when the Chicago Bulls were racking up NBA titles. Whenever they were in a game, one of their assistant coaches would track "defensive touches" — not just the official defensive stats of steals and blocks, but *every* time a Bulls player got a hand on the ball while playing defense, even just to momentarily disrupt an opposing player's dribble or the like. They discovered that it was a reliable measure of overall defensive intensity, and that it was a leading indicator for the more obvious defensive stats, especially the number of turnovers forced. And it was a prime coaching point every time the Bulls went into the locker room at halftime. All of those players were dead set on keeping that number high, which was a contributing factor for the withering defensive displays of those teams during the 3rd quarters of games.
I help future retirees take full control of their retirement investments today
2 年On the personal side, I had that same sleep apnea number (mine was 67) three decades ago. Still have the same CPAP -- probably need a newer model to optimize it, but it does the basic job of blowing air up my nose. My new one number has been BP. Got way out of control last year through a combination of extreme stress, Covid, and generally not taking the best care of myself. Even with meds (admittedly inconsistent), my baseline was usually about 150-160 / 85-90. Today, it's 120/70. That's a super important number, with wide ranging impacts on your health. If it's not in about that range, I recommend that as your one number. The things you do to improve it will almost certainly improve whatever other numbers you're concerned about.
I help companies, entrepreneurs & organizations build engaging sustainable online communities | I'm a superfan of Coffee, Community & Storytelling.
2 年Great movie, and you are so right about sleep apnea. I've had severe sleep apnea for many years now. You are only as good as the machine, too. I discovered that the past two years. Glad it's helping you Chris Brogan! Great point about the "one." I am searching for that now, but I know this. It involves strategic storytelling.
I help future retirees take full control of their retirement investments today
2 年Mine's easy: SQL/$ No, not Structured Query Language - Sales Qualified Leads per dollar spent. I used to think it was ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). That's true in an ecommerce business - no salespeople involved. But if you're responsible for marketing, not sales, then your "one number" is how many qualified people you put in contact with your sales team for every dollar spent on marketing. That's how you evaluate every marketing channel, every funnel, every campaign, every split test.