There are many roads to Rio, so they say. But there is one overwhelming method of
appraising the effectiveness of a business leader.
Outcomes.
We can invent lots of metrics to measure progress for a leader, including revenue, profit, employee satisfaction, cost containment, percentage of available market, and more. But these are all individual roads to Rio – which is the stated goal for the organization.
What is your leadership end game goal?
For many early-stage companies with outside investors, the goal is to ultimately sell the company or even go public, always at a significant increase in valuation over time. For larger or later stage companies, it could be to increase market share through acquisitions with the attendant elimination of competition or increase in a company’s reach.
Have you stated a goal for others to follow?
I prefer a financial goal, such as “achieve $20 million in revenue within five years.” That requires real thought and strategies.
[Email readers, continue here…] More importantly, what if you as a leader haven’t a stated goal for your enterprise? How do you begin to measure your effectiveness if you lead without corporate purpose?
So, how do you measure yourself as a leader?
If you find yourself unable to answer this question, it is time to regroup with your senior leaders, board members and investors – and look for consensus upon a goal. With that in hand, short-term or long term, you should then be able to plot a course of strategies and tactics for you, each of your direct reports, and the entity as a whole to focus resources upon and to progress through the steps to achieve that goal.
Yes, if you are a bad leader of people, you will lose human resources and frustrate your attempt to reach to goal. And if you rough ride through your human resources just to achieve the goal and somehow achieve just that, does that achievement make you a good or great leader? Perhaps your investors would think ‘yes’ while your entire staff would be in the opposite camp.
Measurement of outcomes
So, outcome measurement is a more nuanced art – involving goal achievement for the entity while being sensitive to and an enabling resource in the achievement of goals for your human resources as well. And that’s not as easy as “simply” selling the company or achieving a financial goal over time.
With this information and challenge, how would you measure your effectiveness as a leader?
