Results matter to the business and so results should matter to every employee.
The employees that know this - and own this - gain credibility and visibility within their organizations.
However, knowing a few metrics is not enough.
It is critical you understand how your role moves the business forward, gain an understanding of what drives results, take personal ownership in improving them, and communicate them often.
Here's how:
5 Steps to Results Success:
Measure Everything.
Start by identifying all the metrics and measures associated to your work.
This can take many forms but some examples are: web page visits, email clicks, sales calls, sales call time, retention rate, foot traffic, total sales, product sales, return rate, customer experience scores, survey data, etc.
Always Be Optimizing.
Next you will want to monitor these results regularly and always ask yourself: “what could I change in order to improve these results?”
For example, if you find that your sales are high but your foot traffic is low, you could investigate if the challenge is the foot traffic. If so then, create a plan to increase foot traffic.
Communicate Widely & Often.
It's critical that you actively share results and plans for improvement with your key partners.
Your "key partners" are those that would benefit from knowing this information.
It's best to base your frequency of communication against how often you have substantial updates (ex: bi-weekly or monthly).
Tie it Together.
When communicating your work, be sure to include relevant results and relate results towards core business objectives.
For example: your digital click-through-rate doesn’t mean much unless you provide the context as to why this will make the business more successful.
Know your Stuff.
Be able to answer the question: “why is this metric x?”
It's important to not stop at "just knowing the numbers" and continue to actually "understanding what drives them." So, stay curious.
If a business isn’t actively growing it will not remain sustainable.
All business leaders are carefully monitoring results to determine the next best action to improve.
To increase your capital in the company - and be seen as a leader - make results a priority.