Meaningful Metrics

It is easy to measure what is visible.

Sales calls. Quotes sent. Jobs completed. Hours worked. Meetings held. These numbers can be useful, but they do not automatically tell you whether the business is getting stronger.

A metric becomes meaningful when it helps people make better decisions, take better ownership, and improve the result that actually matters.

That is where leaders need to be careful. A number can look clean on a report and still drive the wrong behaviour. People can hit the call target without improving conversion. They can complete jobs faster while quality drops. They can grow revenue while margin disappears.

The old warning known as Goodhart’s law says, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

A number on its own does not automatically shape behaviour. The environment around it matters too.

On a recent trip to visit our son, this principle was highlighted in the driving experience. In Malaysia, the speed limit seemed to be treated more like a suggestion and did not appear to have much impact on behaviour. This contrasted sharply with Singapore, where people seemed very conscious of the standard and adjusted their behaviour to align with the target that had been set.

That does not mean targets are bad. It means leaders need to understand what the target is teaching people to chase, and what environment sits around that target.

A useful metric should connect activity to outcome. It should help the team understand what good performance looks like, not just whether something happened. It should strengthen ownership, consistency, customer experience, commercial awareness, and quality of decision-making.

The challenge for leaders is to look at the measures currently getting the most attention. Are they showing movement, or are they showing progress? Are they helping people understand what matters, or simply giving them something easy to count?

Start with one number your team talks about often. What behaviour does it encourage? What result does it protect? What might it hide?

Meaningful metrics do not just report the business. They help shape it.