I’ve talked a lot about clearly articulating “what success looks like” to your team members. But what does that mean in practice? Here’s a quick-and-dirty way to work with your team to define what success looks like for them!
Gather some or all of the individuals who fulfill a particular role (depending on business size).
Decide which problems that role solves for the business. For example, one of the problems a customer service rep might solve is “making sure all customers can access their accounts.” (Notice I didn’t say “answer customer emails.” That’s a task they do to solve the problem, not the problem itself.)
Come up with one weekly (or daily!) metric for each of the problems that role solves. In our customer service rep example, perhaps one of the main ways they make sure customer access their accounts is by quickly resolving email tickets. So a metric might be “0 open tickets at the end of each day.”
And remember, when it comes to metrics, you’re allowed to change them as you get smarter about which numbers to focus on to really move the needle. Don’t stress about getting this perfect if you’ve never done it before!
Fire up a spreadsheet where the employees who perform this role track their weekly metrics. Chances are, if they’re responsible for reporting their data, they’ll be the ones proactively coming up with ways to improve those metrics.
Now you’ve clearly defined what “success looks like” for that team and any new employee coming on board will be crystal-clear from day one about what it takes to do an awesome job.
Even better, with clarity on the results that matter most, you free your team to innovate and build true ownership over how they get the job done.
And that’s how you keep A-player employees engaged and excited to come to work.