As a society, we went from under-measuring to being flooded with metrics and meta-metrics. And as people, we are wired to get addicted to numbers. The great news is that they are not subjective or opinion-guess-feeling-based — they are a common denominator for businesses until they aren’t. The more data and systems we introduce, the more terms we come up with — making it an intimidating pool of distractions and FOMO. Suddenly everything became important, making everything less significant. And that is especially true for the less data literate.

As technology gets democratised, customer experience demand increases and digital channels become the norm, keeping up and making decisions are a mix of agility, testing, and long-term strategy. As algorithms and content of social media change, so does the behaviour of our end customers, and while there are no accurate benchmarks to refer to, measuring and analysing your external and internal performance is a whole new challenge.

Know and measure the value; don’t just measure the value.

That’s right; you should know what value a metric is bringing to the overall picture and strategy, not just focus on the value it is showing. Success is multidimensional, and not all dimensions are equally made or contributing — nor can we have a single facet tell the whole story. Having the rapport between those dimensions will help to tap hidden opportunities or lessons. If your revenue is growing at a high rate, but you’re still at a loss, can you answer the right questions? Do you have the data for that?

What is a KPI for one, might be a vanity metric for another company.

And sometimes those KPIs are only meaningful for specific processes and departments. Yes, I know, I confused you even more. The thing is that there’s no universal blueprint for KPIs, even though there are shared ones in a particular industry or vertical or business model. One reason is that there’s no single successful blueprint for the strategy and priorities of all companies.

But, not all of it is bad news. There’s a correlation between vanity metrics and meaningful ones. The latter is the tip of the iceberg, and all there is in the underwater is the hard work to keep that afloat. And what matters is how much the size of that tip is affected by the force needed to keep the rest of the iceberg there. We often call it ROI, but it comes in colours and with cousins.

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