In every business, and in every part of the business, there are a
few critical success factors or benchmarks that you can use to
measure performance and results in each part of the organization
at any time.
These measures can be as simple as daily sales volume, or
they can be as complex as gross sales revenue per person
employed in the company. One of the most important things
you can do to help you concentrate your attention is to select
the few critical success factors or measures that can most
quickly and accurately give you a reading on the key parts of
your business.
When I was developing real estate, I built a pizza restaurant
in one of my shopping centers. The owner, a successful entrepreneur
named Peter, had several restaurants in different parts
of the city. Each time a pizza order was taken, it was written up
on a sales slip that was put on a spike on top of the cash register.
This was Peter’s critical success measure. He could walk
into any restaurant, at any time of day and, by looking at the
number of sales slips on the spike, he would have an immediate
idea of how well the restaurant was doing that day.
What numbers go onto your spike? Most businesses focus
on daily, weekly, and monthly sales. Many individuals focus on
the amount they earn per week, month, or year. Successful
entrepreneurs think in terms of how much they earn each day.
The most successful people think in terms of how much they
earn each hour. This becomes their benchmark for personal
performance and financial results.
Your ability to select the correct critical success factors,
and then to concentrate on improving those numbers, is a key
responsibility of leadership. If the numbers you choose are the
right ones for your business, a single number can reveal a lot
about what is going on throughout the enterprise.
