MeasureSuccess-Cover

Think about the way you evaluate your business. You look at website traffic, social media stats and, of course, the bottom line. I do not know about you, but YAWN! These statistics fail to tell the entire story of your business and its success. Why? Because your business is more than just the numbers. Your business success measures should be as well.

How to Change Your Business Success Measures

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Brainstorming

Wow, brainstorming what a great cutting edge idea. Yes, it’s a very standard response to solving ideas, but it works. Rally your employees and get thinking. Schedule two brainstorming sessions to create a two-pronged approach to measuring success.

Brainstorm #1: How do employees evaluate success within the company? What makes your employees excited to come to work? What factors do employees feel are important to your internal success? Find a way to measure these objectives to continue employee satisfaction. Listen to what your employees have to say and start taking these ideas into account when tracking your company’s success.

Brainstorm #2: How do customers evaluate your company’s success? Success for customers may be a positive experience which they share by word of mouth. In turn, your company tracks how many people give you a call based on a referral. Perhaps, success is when a customer takes the extra time to reach out and thank you for your company’s services. Find what makes your customers tick and place it into your success equation.

By posing these questions, employees are given the chance to share their thoughts. These thoughts may result in a proactive approach to success or just get the conversation started. Effective measures are company specific and are not inside the (boring and metaphorical) box. 

Be Specific

Be mindful about the types of success measures you integrate into your evaluation. Some factors are too difficult to measure. For example, trying to track the daily happiness of employees will end with nearly useless results. A better approach is analyzing retention rates of your employees or the number of potential hires who heard about your company’s positive culture.

Your company has a story to tell. It’s an entity in itself with ever changing viewpoints and goals. Be sure to upgrade your customer and internal success measures along the way to match the ever changing status of your business. Don’t diminish the power and intrigue of your business’s story by only evaluating based on the bottom line.

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