Finding Your One Thing

What one metric could transform your business? In Continental Airlines' remarkable story, a new CEO took the company from ranking 20th in customer satisfaction to becoming a top performer by focusing exclusively on improving on-time departures. This powerful example demonstrates how finding the right measurement can completely change your business trajectory.

In this episode, Bill talks about how to incorporate four distinct types of metrics: leading indicators (activities that predict future results), lagging indicators (outcome measurements), people indicators (team performance metrics), and productivity measurements (typically output divided by input). When combined with effective reporting methods and strong accountability systems, these metrics create a powerful engine for business transformation. Just as with personal goals like weight loss, business improvement requires clear targets, consistent tracking, and someone to hold you accountable.

Ready to implement this in your business? Get a free copy of my book "The Coach Approach" at GiftFromBill.com or download our Scoreboard Optimizer tool by responding with "optimizer." If you're in the Western North Carolina area, consider joining our business community that meets monthly to work through these exact challenges. The right metrics, properly tracked and consistently addressed, truly can transform your business.

Thanks for Listening. You may contact me at https://billgilliland.actioncoach.com/

All the best!
Bill

Thanks for listening. Please hit the subscribe button and share this podcast. You can reach me at williamgilliland@actioncoach.com.

All the best!

Bill

Chapters

• 1:11 Continental Airlines Transformation Story
• 2:18 Finding Your Business Metrics
• 3:16 The Four Types of Measurements
• 5:14 The Scoreboard Optimizer Tool
• 6:14 Client Success & Community Invitation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hey, there, there's a great story about a former CEO of Continental Airlines, and Continental was ranking super low in all the customer satisfaction rankings and they were like 20th in the US airlines, and it just wasn't acceptable. So new CEO comes in and decides hey, what is something that we can concentrate on, what is one thing we can fix that will completely change the game for us? And what he came up with was we need to start improving on-time departures. And so that was the number on-time departures, and so that was the number on-time departures. And so everybody on the team was working to improve on-time departures, and they were 20 for a while and gradually it began to grow and I think they got it all the way to third or fourth of all the American airlines. And it was all because they found the one measurement to focus on.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Now I've talked to a lot of clients and I've asked them to do a lot of homework, and usually I have to sit down and work through this with them on how to pick a proper metric, and so I'm going to go over it with you now. I want you to know that all of this is in my book, the Coach Approach, and if you want a free copy of it. All you got to do is go to Give From Bill. If you want to get a hardcover copy of it, then you're going to want to go to Amazon and just look up the Coach Approach. It'll pop up and you can just order it from there. It's a very short book, but this chapter that we're talking about is called the Numbers Don't Lie, and it's about picking metrics that are going to help you improve your business. So you're going to want to pay attention. This is often kind of a dry subject, but it's out there, so I'm going to go over exactly how to do it. And then we've got a thing called the Scoreboard Optimizer, which we are happy to share with you. We created a tool that you can download or that you can request, and we'll email it to you.

Speaker 1: 2:47

So let me tell you how you do it. The first thing you do is you choose a problem, something you want to solve, something you want to improve, an opportunity, anything like that, that you want to get better at. The second thing is what is your desired outcome? So let me just give you an example. I'm going to use weight as an example. So what do you want to improve? Well, an improvement in weight or fitness. Let's say you want to lose 10 pounds. So the outcome you want is whatever weight you want to get to. So if you're at 175 and you want to be 165, then 165 would be the outcome. What are the actions you're going to have to take? Well, the actions you want to get specific here. But in general, to lose weight, you need to either eat less, get more exercise or do both. So you want to have specific plans for that. But let's just say that's basically what you have. So what's the current situation? Well, if I'm trying to get to 165 and I weigh 175, the current situation is 175.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Then you want to come up with your measurements, and so there's four kinds of measurements. There's leading measurements, there's lagging measurements, there's people measurements and then there's productivity measurements. So leading measurements are something like an activity that was going to lead to an outcome. Lagging would be lagging. So, for example, in this case, leading would be maybe how many calories intake or how many hours of walking I did, or something along the lines. That would be input. Lagging is going to be the actual weight People indicators. That's how you would measure a person, you'd measure a team, you'd measure maybe the whole company on certain people indicators, and then you have productivity indicators, which is generally an outcome over an income. So, more in-depth, if you'd like some help around understanding those or putting them into your business KPIs from top to bottom, then you're going to want to reach out to us. We'll sit down, we'll have a bit of a chat with you and we'll talk about how we can help you do that.

Speaker 1: 4:45

The next thing you want to do is figure out how you're going to report it. So, is it going to be a chart? Is it going to be a graph? Is it going to be just numbers in an Excel spreadsheet? Whatever Excel spreadsheet, whatever it is. And then you got to set up accountability. So what is the accountability Like? Who's going to hold you accountable? Well, if I were losing weight, I'd want a buddy or my wife or somebody that I could have to report this to. Then what do I need to learn? Well, I probably need to learn how to eat better and need to do certain workouts. Whatever it is, I am going to need to learn something to improve this thing. So that's how you do it. It's all on the optimizer. If you'd like a free copy of the optimizer. Just put optimizer in the return email or in the chat, depending on where you're watching this, and we'll be glad to get you a free copy of the optimizer and you can begin to put numbers into your business.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Now. This came home to us because we get our clients together every Tuesday or every second Tuesday of the month. So, by the way, if you're anywhere in the sort of Western North Carolina area and within a couple hours of here and you'd like to join us for a day, then let me know. We'll be happy to invite you to come in and check out our community. We get great work done. We worked right through this and helped all of them get at least one metric for them to work on, so one thing for them to improve and one metric to measure. Generally we had four or five metrics, but that was how it all worked out. So if you'd like some more help with that, just reach out to us. Hey, and I hope you have a fantastic week and until next week, all the best.