Metrics are critical to the success of a business, business functions and every role within those functions.
If you have been with TruMethods for a while, you’re aware of my passion for numbers and accountability. Throughout my career, I’ve learned that visibility and accountability on metrics alone could move the needle. From a high level, I call this “instrumenting the business.”
At the top, you have company goals, key drivers and high-level metrics (I call these “North Stars”). For a managed service provider (MSP), that could be the average seat price, average MRR, net MRR gain or support efficiency. All of this cascades down to every service delivery area, each functional area in the business and then to each role. All the metrics need to tie back to company goals, which takes some thought and ongoing maintenance.
Instrumentation should flow to everyone — that is critical. Too often, people work hard and think they are doing an excellent job when they are not meeting key metrics. We all want to do an excellent job, but it is not easy if we do not know exactly what success looks like.
Some people say that extreme focus on instrumentation and accountability can be bad for culture, like you are micromanaging people. I could not disagree more! This goes back to the concept of the essence. If each team contributes to the definition of the essence, then accountability to metrics is how each contributor can take responsibility for their results. To me, that is awesome.
No matter how good you are at this process, you can improve. Too many times, I ask business leaders questions about metrics they should know, and they cannot answer me. That’s like flying a plane without proper instrumentation.
That’s not the flight I want to be on. What about you?
