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August 17, 2005
You get what you measure
I bet most microbusiness owners don't spend much time thinking about their key performance indicators (KPI). In fact, a lot of them probably don't know what those are.
I got to thinking about this when I read Jason Burby's short, informative article yesterday on ClickZ.com. Because there are a lot of us who have goals in mind when we start our businesses, goals that may or may not be monetary in nature but that we believe we'll feel successful when we reach.
The thing that's cool about KPIs is that they offer a way to know when you've reached them and they provide a systematized way of understanding whether your current strategies are moving you toward those goals.
They also remind me of something SBA Administrator Hector Barreto said to me when I interviewed him back in 2003. He said it was an old saying in business but since I don't have a family full of small business owners, it was the first time I'd ever heard it.
He said, "You get what you measure."
For the record, I've found that to be true. That's because whatever you are measuring will change your behavior. If your measurements are showing little growth in whatever it is that you're measuring, you'll change what you're doing to improve your numbers -- the assumption being that if you are taking the trouble to measure it, that must mean you want more of it.
So, when you devise measurements that tell you if you are moving toward the overall goals in your business's mission, then you will eventually achieve those goals. Because you get what you measure.
Something to think about.
Posted by The Journal Blogger at August 17, 2005 03:09 PM
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