Third Door PRG Metrics

(This is the companion post for the Business Journal column on The Great Disconnect, and the importance of measuring key growth components that top management claims they care about most)

We’ll keep it short this week.

Here are five metrics that should be measured across any organization, primarily within the top management and sales & marketing organizations.  Outside knowledge – then subsequent thinking and ideation – is what allows people and their companies to consider different and better ways of doing things.  And that – innovation – is what creates a powerful continuous improvement-focused enterprise.

These five components are the DRIVERS of determining the intelligent design of a more effective business model and associated value proposition.

• Education.  Reading (yes, books!), visits to other companies, seminars/workshops attended … outside the company … are all necessary to balance left and right brain thinking.  Simply measure what each person has done on a weekly basis, and assess what was learned.  Have you not heard of Peter Senge?  1990?

• New ideas.  I’m not referring to a suggestion box-type activity.  Rather, how often is the manager required to ask her subordinates their thoughts on how systems and processes can be improved?  Better yet, how about industry-disruptive ideas?  Think big!  Seriously, does the top dog in the entire company hold his executives accountable for weekly ideation from the bottom up?  Why the hell not?  How else are you going to improve?  Important question:  What could a company be spending their time on that’s more important than creating new ideas and ways to improve?

• Writing.  Written business briefs and white papers to be formally published in industry media, and employed within all sales and marketing activities.  Remember, each and every one of us should be a publisher.  How else can we create our expert platform that tribes will be attracted to?  Recognized experts earn the right to charge a premium, and don’t we all desire greater margins?  Have you ever taken the ten minutes to explore Amazon.com’s author program?  E-books are very easy to publish today.  Get after it!

• Public Speaking.  How many speeches have been performed to associations, organizations, and target client companies?  What measured feedback was collected from respective audiences?  This is how highly qualified leads are secured in the third millennium.

• Employee Happiness.  That’s right, not shareholder happiness – employee happiness.  What are the drivers of this critical component?  Figure it out, measure it, and reward and recognize for it.  Is there anything more important in the entire organization?  (Helpful hint:  this has FAR less to do with money than you think)