How should we really evaluate success in this COVID climate?

If you have heard it once lately you have heard it, one thousand times. As people describe the impact of COVID – expressions like “game changer”, “new normal”, “paradigm shift” and many more are being used to describe the wholesale changes to how we live as well as how we conduct business. If the world is being changed so drastically by this crisis then surely the way we measure and what we choose to measure, as far as failure or success, must also change? But is that change happening as quickly as it needs to?

For those of us in the travel, hospitality and tourism sectors we cannot adjust quickly enough. We were the first group impacted by the crisis financially and we need to be the first to respond!

There are obviously numerous ways to evaluate both your organization and any measurements you might use around its success. Some companies in prior years have focused on profit at all costs, others were consumed with keeping shareholders and Wall Street excited about their performance, for some accolades and awards from third parties are what counted and still others measured customer satisfaction religiously in order to feel that they have checked the box. There were also metrics around growth, acquisition costs, market penetration and numerous others.

Each of these measurements certainly have their own merit and their own importance - whether you feel they are key or not to your business they do all have an impact of some type on how your organization performs.

However even before COVID changed the landscape, there is irony here. Apple for example spent many years irritating Wall Street and investors yet they are obviously one of the best performing stock investments of all time. Amazon focused a lot on the importance of the customer and yet developed a reputation for not treating their own employees well and for being greedy. Boeing was turning great profits year after year but their dishonesty around the 737Max eroded those gains almost overnight.

What’s the lesson?

I believe the lesson is that none of these tried and tested methods worked quite as well as we might have liked to have thought they did, and they certainly work even less well in the new reality of post COVID. Does a single metric really exist anymore that companies could rally around or are those days over? Do “good times” and the results of good times actually mask the true value of all these metrics?

Mark Cuban said at the beginning of this crisis that “people will remember how companies handled themselves during this crisis for the next twenty years”. I agree and that’s exactly the problem we are all facing today, but it might also speak to the solution. Nobody will remember profits or stock performance or industry awards for twenty years, but they will remember how we behaved as companies, as corporate citizens during the crisis and probably immediately after.

If your measurement of success has not changed and is therefore now inaccurate then you may plod along, measure and make changes based on this factor, only to find that your choices and decisions have not resulted in your becoming a company that is guided by real values. To some, that’s ok, but I think most of us don’t want to be seen through that lens.

Clearly the crisis has changed the way we should measure success, but has it actually changed the way we do measure it? Are we still looking over our shoulders and comparing 2020 to the good old days? Are we forever stuck in a cycle of comparison to prior years performance when the comparison is faulty? Are we yearning secretly for things to be different when the reality smacking us all in the face is these are very different times? If we are still yearning and longing for better times that are clearly now gone then there is no doubt we will struggle to adjust to a new normal.

That said maybe there has never been a better time to re-evaluate what drives your organization and to convert to a more value-based system. If you can operate in good times and bad using solid principles, then all the other benefits will follow. Hard times like these test your mettle and therefore they uncover hidden flaws. When you find flaws in how you make decisions and why you make those decisions they don’t need to be accepted as unchangeable, they can be fixed. Imagine rating success during this crisis not by profit margins but by how many employees you can keep happy. Instead of seeking an award from your industry give back to it. Rather than upselling to existing customers find ways to engage on a different level. Maybe its time to finally measure how you behave and not how much you make?

The crisis has admittedly flipped everything upside down, you can either flip with it or you can resist. What are the new metrics of success for your organization?