I last wrote in Red, Orange, or Green that top performing organizations find one or two critical numbers that drive all organizational results. Rather than tracking tens or hundreds of numbers, there are always a handful of critical ones that all the others depend on. Focusing on those few critical numbers creates rhythm and momentum. I want to give some concrete examples of how this works for me.
I committed myself this year to write two blog postings every week. Rather than focus on how many subscribers I have or how many readers, I kept sight of the fact that I need to keep writing, each and every week, so that one day I might have enough content that people would want to subscribe or read my blog. By keeping a crystal clear focus on the measure, writing two blog posts a week, I am surprised to discover that this is my seventy fifth blog posting. The key was focusing on the activity (writing blog posts) and not the outcome (how many there were).
I also committed to myself to post ten additional photos to my Flickr Photostream. Same idea — focus on the activity. This has been less successful for the simple reason that I have not been keeping up with ten additional photos a week. I have been doing some challenging work for clients and I made the conscience decision to leave my Flickr photo activity behind so that I could focus on my clients. The result is that the number of photos that I wanted to have on Flickr by now is far below what I wanted it to be. That’s what happens when you fall behind on your critical number — you fall behind on your outcome.
I like to ride my bike at this time of year. I enjoy being outdoors and it is a great aerobic activity. I use an electronic meter to measure my speed. I am always surprised at how challenging it is to raise my average speed by even a half a kilometer an hour over my twenty kilometer route.
In bike riding the secret to raising your average speed is to focus on your pedals. Bikers, including me, have a tendency to pedal in gears that are far too high. When I want a good work out I should focus on pedaling at 85-100 revolutions per minute. To pedal that fast, I automatically have to gear down. This naturally increases my speed. So the rule is simple — to raise my average speed I focus on pedaling 85-100 RPM.
Our businesses often get stuck in similar high gears. By changing our focus to a different activity we naturally start improving business results. As leaders, we need to help:
- Identify those key activities.
- Measure them.
- Help everyone stay focused on the key activities.
- Get everyone in shape to increase their performance.
How is your organization’s performance today?
