How Do You Measure Success as a Working Mom?: Let's Talk KPIs

As a marketer, I'm a big fan of measurement.

Sure, I am largely right-brained and thrive when it comes to being creative, but creativity cannot stand alone without analysis. They're like peanut butter and jelly. And truthfully, peanut butter on bread by itself just sticks to the roof of your mouth. You don't get the whole package.

In the business scope, it's imperative to implement a PB&J strategy for all campaigns, with success being measured through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set at inception. KPIs give you actionable, tactical activities or overarching strategies to measure throughout the duration of your campaign flight and post-conclusion. And through their analysis, will be telling as to whether you should pull back dollars and reinvest elsewhere, attained return on investment, and are retaining your net customer base.

So, it got me thinking. If I can measure how my campaigns fare as a marketer - how I perform as a marketer - can the same be translatable to motherhood? Can we, better yet, should we rank our performance as working mothers?

I have a few rules of thumb as a marketer when delving into campaign management:

1) Look at metrics prior to campaign launch, during its rollout, and for six months [variable] afterward.

2) Wait two weeks before making initial assumptions about advertising $$ and pivoting strategies.

3) Metrics should be measured across relevant channels and in the following phases: Awareness, Nurture/Consideration, Purchase/Sale.

The most important thing to note is that campaigns are not measured on a day-to-day basis. Which is probably the best advice as a mother: never to measure your success or failure based on one day.

Here's the thing about Mothering, especially Working Mothering: unlike marketing, its measure of success is intangible and variable. The KPIs of working motherhood are dependent on each individual mother. So, on the days that you feel like you're failing, who are you comparing yourself to? You've launched your own individual campaign. You have your own set of metrics. This is something I constantly have to remind myself of as well.

As a Working Mom, I think quantitative measurement is a great way to mentally psych yourself out. If I'm trying to measure the amount of time that I had for Steph per day, not Steph the Mom-Wife-Dog Mom-Businesswoman-Daughter-Granddaughter-Sister-Friend, I'd usually come up quite empty. My pieces of pie would be like slivers. Okay, crumbs.

Instead, look at taking a qualitative approach - and this you can do on a daily basis. This is what I am personally looking to achieve for today, Monday, February 27, to be deemed a success:

1) Happiness

2) Inner Peace

3) Feelings of Accomplishment

Though we are taught to measure success at work, it doesn't mean that this skill has to be transferable at home. Individual success is a deeply personal experience, and it can't be treated statically like a marketing campaign. Some KPIs may rank extremely high with me, but may be blips (or nonexistent) on your radar.

Instead of fixed destinations, look at life as a Working Mom in the form of seasonal ambiguity. Seasons can last days, weeks, months, or even years. Ask yourself this: how can you measure success right now that is true to you in this phase of working motherhood?

Here's to a year of successful mothering campaigns. Don't forget to invest in yourself.