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You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure

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Our Philosophy- As the world of business moves faster and becomes more competitive, having a Business Coach is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity!!!!!!! Whether it's KAIZEN or someone else, everyone should have a professional coach.
We know that somewhere, just beyond our comfort zone, lies our true potential. Reaching it on our own is virtually impossible.
Someone once said that "no organization can rise above the key constraints of it's leadership". Many of us in business would be happy just to .........
 

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You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure

A very successful business friend of mine once asked me; if you were lost in a jungle, what two critical pieces of information would you need, in order to get out? It seemed apparent that I would have to know approximately where I was and where I wanted to get to in order to plot a course. 
 

We agreed that, even if my approximations were not accurate, I would still measure my result and create an opportunity to course correct. With that vision and some persistence, eventually I would vector in on my goal.

So too is it in business, whether we own a business or a position within a business or both, there exists a set of key performance indicators (KPI’s) that can help us stay on track. They can be straight measurements like sales, leads, or units. Using ratios can give us further insights into our productivity like sales per prospect (conversion rate) or billable hours to total hours worked.

Often, the biggest bottleneck is procrastination. The challenge is in recognizing the relative importance of reporting measurements and to correctly associate the time and effort with the benefits. I’m referring to things like lowering anxiety, increasing certainty, increasing accountability, understanding cause and effect, developing best practices, and generally making well founded decisions. The ultimate why is more time and more money.
 

Like most things in life, we need the patience to practice in order to get good at measuring. Learning gaps need to be filled, comfort zones need to be expanded and an understanding of the things we are measuring needs to form over time.
 

You should have a set of KPI’s for the business as a whole, for each dept, and for each individual. Training efforts should be focused on these key drivers and accountability systems set up around them.
 

All performance can be measured. Imagine playing a game without keeping score. How much fun would that be? Imagine the Olympics if results were not measured and compared. In his book “Keeping Score”, Mark Graham Brown tells us, to achieve a balanced scorecard; we should study the following metrics.

• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Satisfaction
• Financial Performance
• Operational Performance (cycle time, productivity, etc.)
• Product/Service Quality
• Supplier Performance
• Safety/Environmental/Public Responsibility 
   

Studies show that just by measuring them, they will begin to improve.

Clint Best is a Certified Business Coach with Kaizen Business Development Inc. in Kelowna. He can be contacted at clint@kbdkelowna.com or through www.kbdkelowna.com
 

Clint Best
Certified Business Coach

Phone: (250) 860-0466
E-mail: clint@kbdkelowna.com