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The Single Most Important Metric

Published about 8 hours ago • 3 min read

If I had to choose one single metric that is the most significant indicator of any business's future success – it would be the ability of the business to attract, engage, retain, and grow the top talent in its industry.

Dear Reader

The Single Most Important Metric

If you could choose only one Metric

If you could implement only one single metric in your business, what would be the single most important metric that would determine whether your business will be successful into the future?

Is it net profit, or positive cashflow? These tell you that you are successful now, but they tell you nothing about success into the future. Today's profit is no indicator of tomorrow's success.

How about some kind of productivity measurement?

That gets a bit closer maybe. If you are being very productive today, across all areas of your business, then there is a good chance that your business will be successful in the next month or quarter – or maybe even a few years, depending on the length of your production and sales cycles.

Is it some kind of measurement that tells you whether you have good processes and systems in place and are following those? Maybe some kind of index that tells you how many things are done on time, or at a certain rate, or as regularly as they are supposed to be done. This is probably getting closer. This tells you that you have a business that has been built as a well-functioning system.

In my experience, whenever I have decided to never buy something from somewhere again, it has been because of the way I've been treated by someone. And when do people treat other people badly? Sometimes people treat other people badly because that is just who they are, but my experience has been that those are by far the minority. Sometimes people treat other people badly because they happen to be having a bad day. Again, the exception – unless having a bad day at work is their day-to-day experience.

People determine the success of everything else

And therein lies the answer.

The single biggest predictor of your future success is the level of engagement that good people have, when they come to work every day.

The most important metric in your business is one that will tell you whether you are attracting, engaging, retaining, and growing the best talent in your industry.

You can have the best strategy in the world. If your team is not engaged in executing that strategy, you will have mediocre results at best.

You can have the slickest systems and processes. If your people are not engaged in following those, they will run sloppily.

You can have the best customer service manual and training in the world. If people come to work and their experience is “This sucks!” they are going to give your customers that experience.

You can have a profitable business today. If your people are disengaged, you will begin to bleed out those profits in staff turnover, absenteeism and low productivity.

You can have the best-known brand in your industry today. If your people hate coming to work, they will, slowly but surely, erode your brand.

You can succeed for a while, doing many different things. But if you are not attracting, engaging, retaining, and growing the top talent in your industry, then sooner or later someone will come along who is.

All your best people will go there.

Your best customers will follow.

Best measurement tool I know for this: Gallup Q12+

Over 25 years of operational and strategic management experience at home and abroad, I have never found any measurement tool for this single metric that is easier, or more effective, than the Gallup Q12+.

If metrics were like wishes from a genie – and I was given one metric only that I would be allowed to implement in a business – then this one would be it.

I don't have much time for consulting work these days, but implementing the Gallup Q12+ is so much fun that I'll make time. If you need some help, feel free to reach out in the comments, or email me at ashton@5-2-50.co.za.

Best regards

Ashton

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