The most difficult questions for most business owners to answer are around company metrics.

As a CEO, it’s hard to see how your company is doing without scrounging for numbers or having a meeting 🤮. Also, if you are like me, and you start going in to find them yourself, you get completely distracted and down a black hole of why Jeffery cancelled and what service he is using now.

Here is what I do to see exactly how my company is performing in less than 15 min a week.

Every week, each staff member submits a single number to our company scorecard.

Here is how I set this up:

1️⃣ Each person is responsible for at least one process in the company.

For example, our Onboarding Specialist is in charge of the onboarding process. It is her responsibility to ensure a smooth experience for our clients and get their products launched in a certain timeframe. She knows that she has the power to change the process if the average “days to launch” is higher than what we want it to be.

2️⃣ Measure the process with a number

Each process can be measured, otherwise, how do we know it is working? It needs to be an actual number that they can really change. For Onboarding, we measure the number of days it takes from the time their onboarding questionnaire is submitted to the time they launch.

3️⃣ We set targets together

The onboarding specialist’s number is 14. Every client should have their new website and backend automation software set up in 14 days or less. Fourteen was not a number I made up. We sat down to look at historical data, weekly data and her goals for the process. Armed with all the information we needed, we set a realistic stretch goal together.

4️⃣ We make sure the extraction of the number is easy or automatic

If the number is hard to find, staff will dread going to find it every week. We ensured it was automatically calculated in one spot or could be easily extracted. In our case, it’s in our client spreadsheet – each has a “Days to Launch” calculation beside their name. We know the lifetime, and current month “Days to Launch” at any given time, as it is auto-calculated into our Living Metrics sheet. It takes her <30 sec to find and send.

5️⃣ They physically report the number to me (or my EA)

She sends this number directly to me. This number is not shared with the rest of the company (although it could be). I place it on the scorecard. Her manager and I can view this. This exercise is good for accountability. I know that I can go find the number, but it is more important for her to find it, verify it and send it to me as an act of ownership.

6️⃣ Green or Red?

Once tracked, we compare it to the target we set out together and colour-code it If it’s on or better than the target, I highlight it in green. If it’s off or worse than the target, we highlight it in red. We don’t do yellow. Yellow gets ignored.

7️⃣ Two reds and we set a plan.

If there are two reds, two weeks in a row, that is a signal for action. The Onboarding Specialist will need to look into her process and what has gone wrong. She will need to come up with a plan to get the number back into the green. Sometimes it’s a fluke, sometimes it’s an issue that she can act on; either way, she needs to have an explanation and a plan of action.

📈 Then, as always, repeat and refine forever.

I am in the process of refining our company scorecard this week. We’ve hired some key people over the last few months, and I am really excited to give our some new metrics responsibilities, here are a few examples:

• Account Executive: Cancellations & Churn
• Growth Manager: Sales
• Account Manager: NPS

We also utilize surveys at key points in the client journey to make sure we get feedback. We take these very seriously and make sure we improve processes where our clients think they can be improved.