In the dynamic landscape of business, challenging the status quo isn't just a philosophy—it's a necessity for growth and innovation. This even applies in the metrics we choose to measure success. This idea is championed by Jeff Bezos, the visionary behind Amazon, where he urges leaders to question even their most long-standing metrics and beliefs. As Jeff aptly puts it, "Don’t manage your business to metrics you don’t really understand and you are not really sure why they were invented in the first place, or if they are still as relevant as they used to be." This skepticism toward proxies, what we at BecomeMore call Challenging the Status Quo, serves as a critical reminder for both business leaders and sports enthusiasts alike.
Building a Super Bowl Winning Team at the NFL Combine
As the excitement of the Super Bowl approaches (Go Brock Purdy), football offers a unique lens through which we can examine the nature of metrics and their attempt to correlate to on-field success. Take, for example, the NFL Combine, an annual event where prospective NFL players showcase their skills in a series of standardized drills and tests. While the NFL Combine serves as a key evaluation event for talent scouts and team executives, it's important to recognize the limitations of these proxy measurements. The drills and tests such as the 40-yard dash, vertical jump, or bench press; while designed to assess athleticism and skill, may not always correlate directly with on-field performance, and ultimately, team success.
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Our Evolving Gridiron
In our world, companies often create metrics as a proxy for the performance of their operations. These metrics, while initially well-intended and valuable, can gradually lose their relevance over time.
Imagine a scenario where a company measures customer happiness based on the number of customer contacts or average customer rating. Initially, these metrics may offer valuable insights into customer satisfaction and product quality. However, as time passes, your team begins managing to these metrics, and these proxies for true performance no longer accurately reflect what you want to measure.
Fast forward five years, and the landscape has changed. The evaluation measures that once served as reliable indicators of success may now be outdated or missing crucial elements. In such cases, it prompts us to question: Are we still evaluating what is truly important to us, or are we instead making decisions and taking actions to hit a targeted metric, a proxy for performance? An example of this shift that impacted many organizations was the measure of "Days of Inventory on Hand." This common evaluation of how "lean" an operation you are running has lost some of its luster as stock outs & supply shortages during Covid proved painful. Many organizations began looking at Safety Stock amounts in addition to attempts of being lean.
The lesson here is clear: Metrics are not immutable truths but, at best, an estimation of system performance. As the world changes, so should our metrics evolve to reflect new realities and emerging opportunities. What may have worked in the past may no longer be relevant in the present. These are key topics when we coach on when we're managing change in organizations.
Finding Your “40-Yard Dash”
How do we navigate this paradigm shift in business? It begins with a willingness to challenge the status quo, a core value of the BecomeMore Group, emphasized weekly on our podcast, "The Leadership Line." One should question whether your existing metrics still align with your organizational goals and values. Embrace a culture of continuous improvement, where experimentation, innovation, and adaptation are celebrated.
Try asking yourself these three questions about your most important metrics you must deliver on:
Unsure what blind spots you've been overlooking? Get in touch with our team: Contact Us