At my company all-hands meetings every month, I like to share high-level stats on how the business is doing. But one slide I've always disliked has been the one on key performance indicators (KPIs).
Having a company-wide meeting and focusing on whether your discount rate is up or down a percentage point in either direction isn't exactly exhilarating stuff. It's also very difficult for team members to care, because the data lacks context. They're likely thinking, "Is that good? Is that bad? What does this mean for my department, my role, my day-to-day responsibilities?"
So, after recently bringing on a new CFO to join ThirdLove, we decided to ditch the slide altogether. Instead, we now focus on what we're calling "hits and misses."
It helps you ask the right questions.
The idea here is to focus more broadly on what's going to have the biggest impact on the business, and what did we think was going to have a big impact but didn't pan out?
For example, recently we have seen strapless bra sales go through the roof. That's great, but now the question to ask is, "Can we double what we're selling? Is there a specific marketing channel that's working really well and should we double-down on our ad spend? How high is high?"
Conversely, if we had seen strapless bra sales plummet, it would have been worthwhile to ask different questions, like: "Why did this happen? Is there anything we have heard from customers? What other data do we have?" Read More at https://www.inc.com/heidi-zak/why-hits-misses-method-better-motivates-your-team-than-kpis.html