KPIs 101: What to Aim For?

Part 1: What to Aim For?

Part 2: What to Measure?

Part 3: Bootstrapping: Data Collection and Warehousing

Part 4: The (Im)Perfect Dashboard

What gets measured, gets done.

That's the usual cliche phrase you hear in meetings; as an encore to a long speech or simply while trying to defend the extensive development overhead. Regardless of the reason, you can't deny it; they're right after all.

See, If I can see a number, as an end-user of that figure, I know I can subject it to some action: I can track it, move it, and if I am lucky, tilt it in my favor. But all that depends on whether that number or metric effectively captures where I am trying to get at. That is to say, the metric justifiably measures the distance to my goal.

Awesome. So at this point, I hope I succeeded in getting you to think, "Yeah, but how do you make such a metric?". Or better yet, "Do I have the goal that I want to track to justifiably measure my distance to?". Well lucky you, that's what this series is about!

What's My Goal?

Let's start with something easy. Say My goal is I wanna read more books.

Here's an Example Goal

Read 100 books this year.

Its simple enough, but not what I call a good goal. Why you ask, simply if you sieve it through the SMART framework you'll know:

• Not Specific: what kind of 100 books? Do magazine qualify? Do articles? Can I read summaries? Or fan fic? Why am I reading 100 books again? What am I trying to achieve?
• Sort of Measurable: 100 isn't that big of a number so I can count (or track in Excel which I will definitely forget to maintain).
• Kinda Achievable: well, that depends on how long each book is really.
• Seems Relevant: I want to read so that works??
• Definitely Time-bound: yes it's 365 days! If I decide to do nothing for the entire year and solely focus on reading the books, I'd probably get it done (right? RIGHT?).

Okay, so our goal is pretty un-smart. Now what?

Step 1: Find Your Y

Let's step back and try to redefine our goal. What you want to do is take your time on this step. Write down as you deliberate why you want to achieve your goal. It's important. The personal agenda is what drives you. It is also what helps you personalize the metric to your situation. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers attributed our success to our environment and not just efforts or sheer dumb luck. If the environment is that important, then it also pays to account for it when verbalizing your goals. I can't beat a top quantile company in the sector by doing exactly what it is doing, especially if I am nowhere near comparable to its structure, team size, and so on. You get the point. I need to play to my strengths. See my adversities as my privileges and opportunities. The more optimally personalized my goal, the higher the likelihood of achieving it.

Step 2: The No Brainer Brainstorm

A good way to get your neurons kicking is asking whys. I like to chain the WHYs because it eventually forces me to ask very simple but thought-provoking questions. Why do we do what we do? Why is it important to sell our products when there are already products/services in the market? What makes me unique? Why do I wanna be the very best like no one ever was? Think, ponder, sleep over it and think again. Important to jot down your findings. But remember: take. your. time.

(risky advice: embrace the existential crises. Beyond that crumbling fear is the very you, you dream to be)

The initial un-smart goal is the answer to your cold-start problem. You need to start somewhere. Your initial goal is all right to get started (reading 100 books). However, through brainstorming and jotting it all down (!!) you are able to see a clearer picture as to why you decided to embark on this journey in the first place.

Sticking with the book example, let's think about our goal. Personally, I like to read. Thinking more upon that I realize that I pretty much lost my attention span a while back; I went from binge-reading through 500+ page fiction novels to barely being able to pick up a book, let alone read a page in one sitting. For me, reading more books is important because it helps me be myself more, I get to learn and it helps me unwind. There are more objectives at play. This is good. This allows me to tap into different aspects and bring it all together.

To rephrase a little more, I want to read because I want to 1) re-gain my attention span 2) enhance my vocabulary 2) gain more knowledge in my domain 3) Find answers to life 4) escape the monotony of my 9-to-9 (for real, that's not a typo).

Step 3: Formalize

This is how you want to formalize your WHY with your goal:

I want to do X because Y that I fullfill by Z

Now using our template, let's put this together:

I want to read because I want to grow and unwind. I can achieve this by doing the following:

• Learning new words
• consuming more creative content
• consuming more domain-specific content
• increase my speed

The prelude and backstory to my need to goal provide context. Also it gives a hint of my constraints (my working hours). You can make a mood board on Figma if you're feeling fancy or Excel if you're more left-brained. But at the end, you want to have these details in front of you as you formalize. Notice how as you formalize, you start to see a more vivid picture of not just what you want, but how you're going to get there as well.

So far we learned what to aim for. The pre-step to the first step of tracking your performance. In the next post(s), I'll walk you through how to:

• quantify these objectives
• capture the data points and build a system to track it
• Building a dashboard with the right metrics

stay tuned!

If you are a small company starting out and need help to be more data-driven, get in touch here.

. If you enjoyed the post so much that you've decided to boost my productivity through caffeine, head here.