What Are You Measuring?
It’s been a year since I started at my new gym. I’ve adjusted to the cadence and appreciate seeing the same friendly faces when I stick to my routine. With some ambivalence, I recently took it up a notch to start thinking about what I’m eating. I’d like to look and feel great for as long as possible!
With a change of ownership, the gym brought in some nutrition experts so I made an appointment with a consultant. She suggested I start tracking what I eat, for the first time in my life. Did I really want to know? I downloaded an app and did my best, selecting food options that popped up in the system and roughly matched my consumption.
It surprised me just how out of sync I was with where my proteins, carbs, fats and calories need to be to achieve my goal- to be healthy and maintain my weight, minus a few pounds! It was a bit alarming to see the fat count turning red as I exceeded my allotment before the day had ended and dismaying to see the protein count creeping up slowly and often never quite meeting its mark.
When we met again, my health coach said several times, “We’re going to start where you are.” I turned the phrase over in my mind. How could we start anywhere else? Now I better appreciate what she means. We had first taken a snapshot of the present reality by capturing my food intake for a week. My coach collected not only that data, but also inquired on the dimensions of the machine doing the eating- my body- and used both data sets to propose new category targets.
As a leader, what do you measure? Two things are needed to start- gathering both the dimensions of your team and getting a handle on its current output. Next you can determine what changes are needed and which items you need to track more closely to pursue the goal.
Dimensions of the Team
Now: Who is on the team? How large is it? What do you know of the background, education, knowledge, skills, strengths and deficits of each player? How well do the actors collaborate?
What would a first stab at gathering data look like? I recall with fondness a favorite manager who did a “listening tour” even before officially joining the organization, meeting for 30 minutes with each person on her new 25-member team to learn who we were, what skills we wanted to be using and our perspective on what was going well or poorly.
Future: If you’re not experiencing the results you want, what would you need to capture to see which elements are the outliers? Is the machine/team capable of the results you envision? Or how might the composition of the team need to change to deliver against them? If you’ve got the right people on board, do they have the skills needed to execute against the plan? Or if not, what tools would it take to equip them- training, job shadowing, additional resources?
My new leader reflected on the data she had gathered and considered it to design a plan for the team, asking us each to play a specific role applying our background, skills, strengths or interests to advance the vision.
Output of the Team
Now: What is the team currently producing and how close is it to the desired outcome?
What might you need to track to see where you stand currently so you can then adjust it to get where you’d like to go- is it the sales numbers, efficiency of weekly meetings, timeliness of reports?
Future: What will the team be delivering when it’s powering full-steam? What processes would be in place? Once you take a realistic picture of where you are now you’ll be more easily able to design experiments to shift direction toward goals you want to hit. If you’re like me, you may need to give yourself permission to not get it right on the first try, but to iterate the design of your plan and what you track until you’ve found a workable system.
What struck me about the first official meeting with my health coach was that she not only adjusted my targets for each category, but also told me which ones to pay attention to, selecting areas that will deliver the most impact for me. Leaders- what are you measuring and why? Choosing high value focus areas will increase the chances you’ll hit the goals over time so your team can look and feel great about its results.
My coach actively engages with me to uncover blind spots and supports me in designing and activating changes to advance toward my goal. Who is empowering you and your team’s process? To explore partnering to soar into the future you envision, drop me a line at Emily@VolareInsights.com. I’d love to hear what you’re thinking and see what’s possible!