Stop Guessing: Measure Success From Day One

Are you about to embark on a significant transformation in your business? Here's a reality check: If you haven't defined your success objectives and ways to measure them from the outset, you're setting yourself up to waste a lot of money and time. Perhaps a catastrophic amount.

I vividly remember the first meeting on planning for success with a business leader on one of our big projects. He was enthusiastic and confident about what this big initiative was going to accomplish. But when it came to defining early measures of success, he was utterly confused.

Your Business Initiative: Are You Ready to Measure Success?

Think of it this way. You want to pursue a new market, launch a new product, or collaborate with a B2B partner on something ground-breaking. You create a business plan, calculate the projected revenue, or estimate the number of clients you'll gain. You set a start date for your new initiative. Sounds solid, right?

But here's the kicker: One month in, how will you know you're on track? What's your barometer?

The retort I hear most often from business owners and leaders is, “One month in, it’s too early to tell.” Really?

Imagine your big initiative is to barbecue the perfect steak. You know what the end outcome is. It's absolutely clear in your mind. You start your project: you fire up the barbecue. How do you know when to put the steak on? How do you know the barbecue is "on track" to give you your perfect product?

You know because your barbecue has a thermometer. That is your interim success metric. If the temperature refuses to rise above 200 degrees or takes 10 minutes to get there, do you have a problem or not? Yes, you do, and you will course-correct. You won't just keep going and throw that expensive piece of meat on a cool grill.

Starting an important project is no different. You have to know whether to just keep going or whether you need to course-correct early, rather than continuing to throw money and bodies at some long-distance, hoped-for outcome.

The Challenge: Defining and Measuring Success Objectives

That’s where we were, the business leader and I. Here he was, about to lead the biggest transformation in his company’s history, and he had no idea what success would look like once we got started.

This particular project involved processing financial documents, so accuracy was critical. That then became our success objective: one month in, we had to see the same level, or an improved level, of accuracy.

Then we needed to measure this. Because the project was somewhat unpopular in some quarters of the organization, we wanted to measure two things: both actual accuracy rates and the perception that accuracy did not erode. Without getting into too much detail, we also developed additional metrics for other important objectives.

Believe it or not, this was some of the hardest work we had to do during planning. There was a lot of debate over what the objectives should be and what metrics were valid.

The Benefits: Unity of Vision and Measurable Success

But the benefits were evident right from the start. Everyone was focused on meeting these objectives or at least seeing whether they could be met. We had that golden mantra, "unity of vision." As the saying goes, “What gets measured, gets done.” If everyone in your company is working toward success, how can you fail?

Ultimately, the whole project was a huge success. The leaders of this well-known national professional services firm considered this the biggest and most successful change project in their company’s history.

It's not enough to just begin with the end in mind. If you want to be successful, you first have to define what that looks like and measure it every step along the way.

For us, this has become standard operating procedure. Every project we participate in, we insist on this exercise with our leadership team. That is our success metric, and it’s never failed us!

So, as a small or mid-sized business owner, remember: Define your success early. Measure it continuously. Celebrate your achievements. This is the path to transformational success. Don’t wait until it’s too late to figure out if you’re on the right track. Act now, and ensure your journey leads to victory.