What are some alternative approaches to measuring success indicators?

Before you even start thinking how to develop a plan that will help a business thrive, you should consider that you have to be humane about it. Projects and plans are mostly ran by people and those people have their own personal lives to worry about. So try as much as possible to consider that while developing your plan and also try to develop the habit of listening. Paying attention to the working team’s narratives and stories is an essential part of the monitoring phase of a plan.

Stories represent valuable learning that will serve as the foundation for planning a new project. These experiences play a pivotal role in offering a deeper, more contextualized understanding of the impact. While data provide an objective viewpoint, stories offer a human context, revealing changes, challenges, and outcomes that might be overlooked in a straightforward numerical evaluation. By collecting testimonials, one can effectively capture how an initiative has transformed lives, addressed specific issues, or met expectations. Furthermore, by sharing these narratives, an emotional connection is forged with the audience, engaging the team, fostering commitment, and becoming a potent tool to convey value and meaning beyond mere numbers.

Inspired by the Balanced Scorecard methodology: 1. Financial Health: Core metrics like Net Profit Margin, ROI, and Cash Flow. 2. Operational Excellence: Efficiency indicators such as inventory turnover and supply chain lead times. 3. Customer Centricity: Metrics like Net Promoter Score and customer retention rates. 4. Employee Engagement: Employee turnover rates and satisfaction scores. 5. Innovation and Growth: Number of new products developed and time to market. 6. Sustainability and Ethics: Carbon footprint and energy consumption. 7. Risk Management: Compliance rates and risk exposure levels. 8. Digital Transformation: Degree of digitalization and technology adoption. 9. Market Position: Market share and customer acquisition rate.

Most people are familiar with and comfortable with gathering and working with quantitative data; however, narratives and stories (qualitative data) can reveal vital information for those willing to wade through the myriad sources and formats to code, derive themes, and extract the meaningful information. This is becoming exponentially easier with computing capabilities and power of AI and the data rich big data sets. The cautionary tales being the necessity to keep clean data so that it does not become dark data, and in the case of qualitative data, allow the data to tell the story rather than look for an answer in the data.

I follow this up with what I call the “Been there, Done that” approach. Recognizing that I am not the first to use this analogy, what I love most about it is that after sharing stories and ideas, I found confidence and trust in those leaders that led me and took me under their wings after what they shared with me in stories, was followed up by real world scenarios each of them experienced with both successful and failed outcomes. I believe both perspectives were beneficial to the road map going forward and I continue to use this approach with new teams I create and mentees that I mentor today.

Behavior definitely is a huge deciding factor for when it comes to measuring success mean happiness in field. for example, if one employee is not happy with how the work plan is going then most probably his issue has to be addressed not in problem solving

As a confident leader, team or organization, receiving feedback and surveys is an essential tool for gaining invaluable insights and achieving unparalleled success. In sales, obtaining feedback and conducting surveys from consumers who did not choose your company can be an incredibly powerful tool. This information provides valuable insights that can help you identify and address the gaps that prevented customer acquisition in the first place. By leveraging this knowledge, you can confidently take your business to the next level and improve your customer acquisition strategy.

Surveys provide leaders views from every vantage point in an organization, identifying blindspots as well as opportunities. High-performance organizations seek continuous improvement through feedback and surveys are a tool to improve the quality of the leaders.

Feedback- when given in an open and honest culture can give excellent insight. Feedback can help you to understand the context so you really get what works well and what didn’t land in the way you hoped. Just remember- feedback is a gift and it must be properly wrapped!

Alternative approaches to measuring success indicators include qualitative assessments, stakeholder feedback, key performance indicators (KPIs), balanced scorecards, and social impact assessments. Each method provides unique insights into different aspects of success, allowing for a more comprehensive evaluation.

Behavior definitely is a huge deciding factor for when it comes to measuring success. For example, if one employee is not happy with how the work plan is going then most probably his issue has to be addressed separately, but if the majority of the team are not happy then there must be something wrong with the overall plan and might need some revision. Also, it is true that behavioral changes are sometimes hard to detect but they are much more accurate and truthful than most surveys and feedbacks and will always provide a reading of what is actually going on.

The strongest indicators of change are shifts in mindset. Changes in policy, behavior, and processes are easier to measure but they are also more transitory and rarely indicate successful changes that address root causes. Measuring changes in mindset more holistically indicate if the change is addressing root causes and provides a better prediction for the success or failure of policy, behavior, and process changes.

Let me illustrate with an example. Let's assume a company implements several improvements in its customer service system to enhance response efficiency to customer inquiries and issues. The "average response time to customers" prior to the implementation was 48 hours. After the improvements, the company observes a reduction to 12 hours. In this scenario, the "average response time to customers" becomes an indicator of change. This metric allows the company to objectively measure the impact of the implemented improvements in its customer service system. If the goal was to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction, a significant decrease in this indicator would signify a positive and effective change in the organization.

I really love the use of reverse indicators to illustrate success. Think of what’s not happening (or happening much less) when you reach ur objective.

Transform how we measure success by focusing on Employee Satisfaction and Engagement. Go beyond traditional productivity metrics to gauge workplace atmosphere. Utilize tools like surveys and feedback forms to regularly assess employee engagement levels. Track changes in staff morale, communication effectiveness, and overall job satisfaction. Recognize that a happy and engaged workforce is a key indicator of organizational health and success, leading to higher productivity, better retention, and a positive company culture.

Finding signs of progress or regression other than KPI or primary data points is mandatory. While KPI are named that for a reason, they don’t always capture realities of operations, and don’t always give you enough information to impact the stat. Look deeper, get in the details, and find the real drivers/indicators of the stat you need to move. Odds are there are a handful of several other indicators or data points that you should be aware of and can use as your actual drivers that identify fail points and signs of progress. This is also crucial to help keep not only you motivated, but should be leveraged to keep your team up to speed and motivated when the bigger stats aren’t yet showing the work you and they are putting in.

Merge the bottom up and the top down perspectives while providing an external analysis by someone who is not familiar at all with the subject. That’s the only way to provide an out of the box perspective. That’s very different from auditing!

In my experience, this is probably the most useful in...at least it is in our business. Our consultants and team members operate in a pretty dynamic field and it can be challenging to measure their success myopically. So we can attribute the good work people do and the contributions they make to our organizations we pull from multiple sources. Subjectively, we do use a narrative or story that is meaningful to their success. Objectively, we look at established KPIs. In the end, we are focused on the "whole person" level and try to give credit where it is due.

Métodos mistos são uma abordagem de pesquisa que combina técnicas quantitativas e qualitativas em um mesmo estudo. O objetivo é aproveitar os pontos fortes de cada método e obter uma compreensão mais ampla e profunda do fenômeno investigado. Os métodos mistos podem ser usados em diversas áreas do conhecimento, como Ciências Sociais, Educação, Saúde e Administração. Existem diferentes tipos de desenhos de métodos mistos, que variam de acordo com a sequência, o peso e a integração dos métodos. Alguns exemplos são: convergente, sequencial explicativo, sequencial exploratório, embutido e transformador. Os métodos mistos oferecem vantagens como a triangulação, a complementaridade, o desenvolvimento, a expansão e a diversificação dos dados.

From a vantage point of a change agent that drives change in a hybrid manner. Change may seem inevitable; however, a more comprehensive approach may be needed first. For ex., business goals and expectation management based on all stakeholders; accessing results and feedback from business line strategic analysis, how is the company/ corporation performing amongst other leading industries; are we above average or are we performing superbly; or are we marginal. Change is needed after buy in from all stakeholders to include mid level management and employees due to root causes if the company is failing or just average. If this is the case, what are the markers. Is there high turnover in management and employees due to policy or toxicity…

This might sound cliche, but it depends on what we are measuring. Companies need to consider employee turnover rate, employee motivation and attitudes. Organizations that have happy employees tend to retain talent and have a more positive impact on the industry and communities they are part of.

Finding a method to determine if the intended effects have been achieved is something complex. Planners with a scientific mindset tend to view the universe they act upon as a system subject to actions adjusted by a feedback loop. This approach only works in simple, if not simplistic, cases. The implementation of measurable target values meant to evolve under the effect of the actions conducted generally ignores the many other parameters that also act on these values, which, moreover, may not be sufficiently linked to the sought effect. For these reasons, it is often preferable to favor a qualitative approach rather than a quantitative one. A complex system is not solved; it is managed.

Existem várias abordagens alternativas para medir indicadores de sucesso. Algumas delas incluem: 1. Indicadores Qualitativos 2. Indicadores de Engajamento: 3. Indicadores de Satisfação do Cliente 4. Indicadores de Retorno sobre o Investimento (ROI) 5. Indicadores de Sustentabilidade 6. Indicadores de Inovação

Volvamos a las bases: 1. Medir lo que es útil e importante 2. Definir indicadores que muestren un resultado 3. Que sea de fácil medición con una frecuencia para su medición y revisión 4. Que permita tomar decisiones para la mejora de los planes y procesos. Finalmente, es importante reconocer lo que es importante; no caer en la sobre medición que no solo quita tiempo operativo; sino que no agrega valor a la estrategia de la compañía. Seamos efectivos en la medición.

Did we include the “deliverables?” …Doing what the boss / client asked me to do counts. It’s also the clear measure of success-achievement-outcomes. Build the team culture around that outcome.