Q&A: How do I get my team to value the right metrics?

Q&A: How do I get my team to value the right metrics?

Have you ever said this to yourself or someone else? “I don’t know how to get my team concerned with the right metrics. It always seems they have excuses when their numbers aren’t where they should be.”

As managers, our performance is always measured based on our team’s performance. This implies you’re measuring something to determine performance success, whether it’s objective or subjective observations you are measuring.

The problem often arises when your team doesn’t even believe or trust your metrics.

This usually happens when you’ve got one of these issues:

  • The team does not understand the goal; or
  • The metrics do not clearly relate to the goal.

Team Alignment Checklist

To get your team to value the right metrics, start with this checklist, which will help you solve either of those issues, and help align you and your team.

  1. Is there a clear vision about what the goal is and how success is defined for the team?You cannot just ride the coattails of the company goals; you mustset goals and vision for your team. They must understand how their day-to-day work ties to what you are defining as success.
  2. Have you clearly communicated your vision and model for success?Can the team articulate the vision and success to others? If they cannot speak it in their own words, you have more work to do. When communicating vision and success metrics, make this a dialogue, not a monologue. Involve the team to help put into words what success for the team looks like. I am not saying a “wordsmithing” session; just something that’s simple and really describes why you do what you do.
  3. Let your team come up with the metrics that show their success. If it is meaningful to them, they will engage with it and own it. Start individually. Let each person develop his or her own success dashboard and  combine them into a team success dashboard.

Do you have a “success dashboard”?

A success dashboard is a collection of key metrics or reports showing how the individual or team is performing against their goals.  Each individual dashboard can be combined or rolled up for a department or organization view of success.

The only requirements for a success dashboardare:

  • The dashboard must directly relate to the success/achievement of the goal.
  • Your team must own it.
  • The dashboard must be able to be reproduced easily and on a regular basis.
  • The dashboard must be about something they can control.

Test it out!

I encourage you to try this with your team, and then come back here to provide comments below on how it worked out for you. Also comment below if you have any questions about team success metrics.

Thanks and remember – It is not about YOU!