Leaders in great organizations have knack for predicting future trends and events before they happen. The better you can predict, the more you can take control. This puts you in a position to create desirable outcomes rather than fighting fires.
Good prediction is a result of identifying and solving issues early.
At the heart of predicting is the ability to identify and solve issues before they grow into problems. Issues identified at an early stage are opportunities (enhancing your ability to create desirable outcomes). Issues discovered at later stages can morph into headaches that require much more of your attention. It’s proactive vs. reactive leadership.
When implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), we use a simple and powerful tool called the “scorecard.” This tool contains the 5 to 15 activity-based goals that are measured weekly. By measuring weekly, you can spot trends, and will be able to PREDICT future results.
Let’s say your business requires 25 warm leads each week to confidently meet your revenue goals. If you measure weekly and monitor your 13-week rolling average, you can identify pending problems — any trending down from the goal of 25 new warm leads per week — well in advance of a crisis. A key component of this, is that one person is ultimately accountable for each measurement. In this case, the Vice President of Sales would most likely be responsible since this would come under his or her domain.
By monitoring the trends weekly in your Level 10 meeting, your leadership team can proactively discuss and debate ways to get back on track to avoid a future crisis i.e., falling short of your revenue goals. Through this process, the team identifies the root cause and addresses the problems straight on. For example, they may decide to add a new marketing campaign to bump up the leads.
As you might imagine, there are scorecard measurements for all main functions of your business (sales, marketing, operations, finance, etc.). Once you determine the right ones for your organization, you’ll be out in front of your business creating the outcomes you desire.
By using this process, I predict you’ll be very happy!
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