When we were kids playing a pickup game of street hockey, we always kept score. The score was important because the game could end suddenly if Ranger, my friend’s poodle, suddenly decided to steal the ball (summer) or puck (winter), and we needed to know who won when that happened. (The worst game endings were when Mom called me in for a bath on Saturday night to get cleaned up before church on Sunday, how embarrassing.)
Keeping score in business is not only important in business, it’s critical to holding your employees accountable for the results that they generate. You will grow your business by continually improving your results.
The key metric in business is daily production. Tracking this information by individual is even more useful. How many units did someone produce, sell, ship, ship on time (according to Rick Pay), or collect? Everyone in your company can be held accountable for at least one business result. Production people make stuff, sales people sell it, warehouse people store and ship it.
You may analyze this data by person, by shift, by location, or by manager to see who the best performers are in your company. Identifying and sharing best practices among the company will help you to grow your business and won’t cost you any capital expenditure or advertising dollars.
Even the accounting department can generate results: creating daily flash reports that show everyone how the company is doing, improving the total days to cash so that there are more resources available to fund growth, and giving managers timely and accurate information so that they can make better decisions, faster.
Metrics will enable to measure results in real-time, hold your employees accountable, and grow your business.
Copyright 2015. Phil Symchych. All rights reserved.
