Gauging Success

The success of your company is driven by the success of each function within the company. While that sounds logical, very few companies really know how to measure the success of each function.

Is your marketing function successful because they created a great looking knew website? Is your HR function successful because they created a new onboarding process or creating a new performance evaluation process?

When you don't effectively measure the success of a function, you spend time on the wrong things, hire the wrong people, promote the wrong people and miss out on major opportunities to grow the business. You wonder why you all seem to be working so hard but not seeing the bottom-line results.

You can’t gauge the success of a function by how hard they’re working or the sheer volume of work they’re getting done. Functions like marketing, HR, sales, IT, need to be measured by their results and how they impact the business.

For example, how do you know your if your marketing function is successful? A great place to start is to define the purpose of your marketing function. If marketing’s purpose is to drive more leads to your sales function, then the most important measure of success might be the increase in the number of inbound qualified leads. That may not be the only measure. Maybe marketing’s purpose is also to drive brand awareness. Then you might want to measure the increase in your social media following or hits to your website.

How about Human Resources. Again, let’s start with the purpose of the function. If HR’s primary function is to hire and develop A-players, one measure of HR success might be the % of A-players in the organization. Or it could be the % of hires that developed into A-players. Putting in a new recruiting process or a new performance evaluation process does not mean HR is successful. They’re only successful if those things drive real results for the company.

Each function, sales, marketing, HR, IT, finance should have 2-3 primary measure of success that are reported on weekly. And, by the way, the CEO or owner should have measures too since they’re accountable for a function called “head of company”.

This is a simple process, but it’s not easy. The challenge is spending the time to define, for your specific company, the purpose of each function and how it drives success. Some functions, like sales, are incredibly straight forward. Other require a bit more thought.

And it doesn’t end with defining those measures. The measures mean nothing if you don’t have a process and a rhythm for holding people accountable for those measures. This means selecting tools to track the numbers, creating a meeting rhythm to hold people accountable, and creating a culture of trust where people are willing to be held accountable and hold each other accountable.

Like I said, simple but not easy. But it’s worth it. Because the success of your company is driven by the success of each function within the company.