My KPIs were wrong - are yours?

Success is complex; it’s a nuanced concept with a plethora of definitions unique to the individual. It’s informed by our backgrounds, our lived experience, our culture and our values. It’s unique to us.?

Yet in the world of work, success is made simple. It takes on a linear, narrow and growth-orientated guise - both for the company and its employees.?

To help us better define “success” and company/individual performance, we break it down into its component parts, using the buzz word of the day: Northstars, OKRs, KPIs and the like. We’re told they should be clearly defined and “SMART.”?

But are today’s KPIs really smart?

Because whatever trending acronym we choose to apply, the commonality between all these evaluation techniques is a focus on a very specific form of success. Whether we’re driving acquisition, revenue or profit, the end outcome of corporate “success” is financial. It’s economic and commercial. And often, it’s at all costs.

This mercenary lens spills over and infiltrates our perceptions of personal success. High-paid promotions with fancy presidential and executive titles are, more often than not, regarded as the pinnacle of success. We celebrate billionaire mavericks who espouse their advice to anyone who’ll listen on how to be like them and achieve the unattainable. The unattainable being more money in off-shore bank accounts than we could ever wrap our minds around.

As a result, we’re told we need to train ourselves to be “rockstars” and seek out ways in which we can fuel the capitalist system we’re embedded within. The more money we make for the company, the more money we make for ourselves. This money turns into fast cars, big houses, the latest fashion and tech gadgets, exotic holidays and fine dining experiences. External symbols that validate a person’s success.

External symbols that, by inspiring envy in others, give us external validation, flattering our egos.

But is this success? Well it might very well be. It’s certainly the sort of success society has put on a pedestal for the past century.?

It’s also the sort of success that I focused on achieving throughout the majority of my career. I felt that happiness and a true sense of fulfilment would come as soon as I’d acquired the next rung on that linear ladder and achieved a status equal to - or ideally above - that of my peers (and with my main peer group being Cambridge graduates, the pressure was on).?

Yet this form of success comes with significant down-sides that we rarely acknowledge publicly. To get a fast-cars-amount-of-salary income, you’re likely to be in what Nobel Prize winner and gender economist, Claudia Goldin, refers to as a “greedy job”. Namely, high-paying, high-pressure roles in fields like finance, management, law and academia. Greedy jobs make high demands of those who take them: hours are long, holidays are skipped, family dinners are missed (alongside birthdays, anniversaries and, indeed, most family occasions).

And forget about indulging in sports, exercise or one’s health: that’s a nice to have. Layer on a fair amount of pressure and stress and you’ve got the recipe for a well paid, but isolated life.

Of course, not all jobs make such demands. I was enjoying a (milestone) birthday lunch with a group of friends in France recently and we somehow got onto the topic of KPIs. A friend shared that he’d just started to work for a charitable fund that invests in charities aimed at reducing child and youth violence. His KPIs were the reduction in gun and knife crimes amongst young children. It put my customer CAC and ROI goals into a certain kind of perspective.?

And it’s a perspective I struggle to ignore.

That’s why I think it’s important to provoke a conversation around “success”. To question whether this traditional focus on material goods (for the individual) and capital at all costs (for the organization) is the norm we want to further embed.

Let’s start by addressing other forms of success, beyond financial gain and material wealth as the sole outcome. How about:

1. Personal fulfilment:?

• Where success is more than just hitting targets. It’s about well-being, happiness and a balanced life.?
• True success means feeling fulfilled— thriving emotionally and mentally.?

2. Impact and Contribution:?

• Where success is defined by the positive impact we make on society.
• Whether we look to advance sustainability, reduce inequality, or create social good, the legacy we leave behind matters more than the money in our bank.?

3.Psychological success:?

• Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? For Maslow, success is achieving self-actualization—the fulfilment of one’s potential. Success involves personal growth, self-mastery, and living according to one’s values. Living with integrity.?
• Success is also about resilience—the ability to navigate challenges, adapt, and emerge stronger. It’s as much about how we bounce back as how far we’re able to go.?

4. Collective success:?

• Whilst much of the Western world takes an individualistic approach to success, focused on personal achievement, success can also be found in contributing to the collective, emphasising community well-being.
• It’s about focusing on ethical leadership, innovation, and social good.

I’m sure there are more, but even with just these 4 examples we can see how we can easily reframe success beyond salaries and titles. It resonates.?

And if we can do that on an individual level, can companies choose to do that on an organisational level??

I’m not the first person, by any means, to question whether organizationally and individually we can transform our understanding of success, and its corresponding KPIs.

Take, for example, the work of Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microfinance and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Yunus redefines success by focusing on social business models that prioritise solving social problems - like poverty and inequality - rather than maximising profits.?

Or let’s try another Nobel Prize winner, economist Amartya Sen argues that success should be measured by the ability of individuals to live the kind of life they value, emphasising human capabilities and freedoms over GDP or profit-driven metrics.??

At the organisational level we’ve seen a proliferation in narratives: conscious capitalism, social entrepreneurship, shared value, the triple bottom line, regenerative capitalism, inclusive capitalism, stakeholder capitalism, the circular economy, alongside the rise of B corps and CSR agendas.

So many fragmented frameworks, united in their aim to reshape the narrative of business success, moving beyond profit-driven models to emphasise social, environmental, and ethical considerations.

Similarly, at the individual level a similar mass of alternative approaches is entering the main-stream through a wave of business coaches, and humanistic commentators. For instance Daniel Pink (“Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us”); Tim Jackson (“Prosperity without growth”), Kate Raworth (“Doughnut Economics”), Bell Hooks (“All about love: new visions”); Kimberle Crenshaw ("Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex"), Patricia Hill Collins ("Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment")? and - who can forget - the classic Simon Sinek , Brené Brown and Adam Grant triad.?

All of these bodies of work naturally have critiques. Frequently they’re seen as too idealistic, especially considering most look to operate within the current (white, male, capitalist-dominated) system.

Can we really encourage organisations to prioritise social impact when profit is king? And can we, as individuals, truly prioritise our health, wellbeing and societal contribution when we not only have bills to pay, but are also judged as “new age hippies” or “do-gooders”, if we look to follow a more collective and value-orientated path? How can this work in practice?

I honestly don’t know what the answer is, but as our world falls further into wealth inequality, extreme poverty, war, corruption, climate breakdown, societal crisis and a mental health pandemic - with no view of any disruptive change on the horizon -? isn’t it inevitable that we must question whether the systems and structures (and indeed, thought processes) that brought us here, can truly save us?

I didn't anticipate this nugget becoming a critique of capitalism but certainly there are fundamental structural flaws in our economic set up that discourage social and environmental impact being prioritised over profit. And the alternatives that look to engender change within the system (as referenced above) struggle to do this in practice. I don't believe I'm anti-capitalist per se - but I’m also not comfortable with our current status quo. I envision a status quo where kindness and care of - and for - others are celebrated and sought after (above all else). Where companies make a meaningful difference in the lives of their employees and in our world that so desperately needs repairing. And I don’t mean an emotional purpose-led brand campaign, highlighting a CSR initiative, aimed solely at driving user uplift.

Half-hearted change is not change. Half-hearted change willingly maintains the status quo, despite the fact it knows it could be better.

Perhaps we need more collective action - or a shock to the system - but surely it’s time for a mass re-think of the traditional and economic definitions of success.?

A good place to start, because we can't remain stagnant, is - perhaps - with what’s within our immediate control. Let’s continue to re-think the boundaries of our own lives, to challenge the structures that tell us what a good life looks like…and ask ourselves, what is a good life for me. Then let’s have conversations around it with the people we meet - just like this one. Small drops adding up to a wave of change.

That would be a real success.?

[NB., I acknowledge the privilege from which this is being written. I have focused this nugget on a specific segment of the high-paid, high-pressure workforce and taken a Western lens. Many people have fewer choices to survive in this world]