The Quest For The Holy Grail: The 5 Best Metrics For Your Team (Part 2)

By Israel Lang, Executive Consultant, HTG Peer Groups

I was asked this month to provide you with the 5 Best Metrics for Service Delivery Management. In my last post I wrote about the fact that my own search for the holy grail of metrics has served fruitless. I proposed that many of you, like me, have at times suffered from “Metric Envy” (measuring the same metrics as someone you deem successful) or “Metric Overload” (measuring too many things and managing none). 

There is hope for finding the five best metrics for your team. Notice I added “for your team” at the end.  In this post, let me lay out the process and principles I used when I was a service executive and what I teach the companies I consult with about determining what should be measured and managed. 

Here is my process in a nutshell: determine what your goal or objective is, define what success looks like, and establish the lead measures that will help you achieve your lag measures.

Determine What You Are Trying To Accomplish In 3 Key Areas: Employees, Customers, And Finance

In my opinion, there are three general areas that all metrics should be focused: employees, customers, and finance.  In some cases you’ll want a couple in each area. In other seasons of business you may need to be laser focused on only one of the three.

If you can’t tell me how what you are measuring influences or helps predict something in one of these three areas, you probably shouldn’t be measuring it.

All functional areas (sales, service, operations, and finance) have a stake in the three areas mentioned above. As the person in charge of service, you should be only choosing metrics that you can influence. I often see individuals measuring something out of their domain and it, at best, distracts them and, at worst, confuses them.

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