These metrics don't matter...
We are data-driven. It is the data that drives our decisions and informs progress
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But herein lies the problem - If you pay a competent person to hit a metric, then they will do so, regardless of what that means. Now, more than ever, quality matters more than quantity. An instructive time for me was when a business development leader explained to me that a core metric for his team was, "Meaningful conversations", which were defined as a call that:
The 'meaningful conversation' stuck with me as a useful metaphor for any activity - In my mind, 'meaningful' = 'matters', which is a question I ask about every metric I am presented with: "Why does this matter and what specific action would we take if it is high/low?"
When you are looking at your own performance (or your business) it is important to understand what matters and what is misleading. When coaching managers I am often heard to say, "Manage what matters, ignore the rest." Perhaps this will resonate with you: I have a lot of friends with watches/wrist devices that monitor heart rate and I think that for 99% of us, this doesn't matter. If you are a long distance runner and want to maximize distance, then maybe you do care, so you try to stay at 70-80% of your maximum heart rate - If it is too low, you speed up, if it is too high, then you slow down.
Now, what about you? If you see your heart rate at 115bpm does that matter? What if it was 95? And yet, a lot of people reading this have a measurement device ...
Applying this to business
There are two practices that we need to avoid:
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False security from metrics
The easiest examples I can cite are:
The wrong metrics
Here are some general examples:
What to do about this
False security from metrics: I have previously talked about 'Core sampling' a practice at Samsara. Have a skim of this if you think you may be at risk of not seeing reality beyond the metrics. One indicator of blind spots is that you inspect via dashboards rather than drilling into reports on a regular basis.
The wrong metrics: When you see a metric ask: "So what? + How do we know that is true?" To learn more about that, check this article.
Musician, Songwriter, Board Member, Strategic Advisor
5 个月You are SPOT on Matt Cameron ! 30 years ago leading a 35 person quota-carrying inside sales team number of outbound calls per day was a key metric… when I ran a spreadsheet of highest quota achievers down to the lowest I then added a column for average daily outbound calls…. There was a nuetral to negative correlation meaning the higher performers were avg to lower quantity of calls. From back in 1995 I held the opinion that quality is better than quantity in sales. I also believed that the only reason we measured 20-30 metrics for inside vs field sales was because we could… emerging CRM and technology enabled it. Another research project by Richard Conde, Ph.D. a few years ago looked at a large call center that had a key metric of “availability” (meaning the sales reps were available to take an inbound call…. Reps needed a high availability rate) You can see where this is heading…. those reps who were highest on the availability metric were lowered in revenue. I do think our sales profession is more careful of what they measure in recent years. One more true story. A softway company w/ 1,000 reps focused on # of calls…. VP’s told reps hit the nbr no matter what. High performers called friends & family to meet the metric
Sales | Psychology | Learning
5 个月Vanity metrics! One of the most common mistakes I see Revenue teams make is making decisions using data that they don't understand. It sucks, but you have to take the time to make sure you understand: 1) How the data is calculated 2) How it stacks up against historicals 3) The behavioral factors and motivators that are likely driving those behaviors. If you're not taking the time to do that, you're probably using data to lie to yourself.
Focused on helping founders build great business software companies. Devoted father, tonal zealot, and unprofessional storyteller.
5 个月Gold - Our win rate is 50% [Because of the 10 opportunities we had at the start of the month we closed only 2, and won 1 of them - The rest slipped]