SECTION 2
Chapter 4:
The First Worksheets
4 minute read
Reid downloaded the app that night. The sequence was specific: first identify what the organization actually measures, then name what each person does that influences those results. He was struck by the thought, “Output, without a metric the organization cares about, is just busyness for pay.”
He recognized that corporate had done him a favor with timing. Next week was open for most managers to let them prepare for quarterly reviews with their employees. The following week the quarterly reviews were to be held.
Reid chose to hold conversations during both weeks. Next week he’d try out the ideas he was learning in the app. The following week he would do the formal reviews.
He printed the app’s two worksheets for each person on his team—Relevant Business Results and Value-Added Outputs, the two Ray had told him to use the app for—and blocked time on his calendar. With Dani leaving, that meant four people. One conversation at a time.
***
Ingrid was first, Tuesday at two—and she arrived excited. Ingrid ran on numbers the way other people run on coffee. And she hadn’t just thought about the question Reid sent ahead; she’d grabbed every number that might be relevant: project figures, the department’s delivery dashboard, targets—individual and departmental both—all printed and tabbed. Set them on the desk before he finished sitting down.
Reid set the two worksheets between them. "Let’s start with what matters," he said. "What metrics are most important to your role?"
Ingrid didn’t hesitate. “I’d say having the implementation plan ready within three weeks of signature, at least 90% of the time,” she told him. “Plus, two process improvements a quarter.” Numbers off her goal sheet, numbers from her last review. Reid started writing, then stopped, pen still on the page. She was the ideal person to start with—more numbers than the rest of the team would bring him combined. But every number had been captured as a goal, an expectation, not as a result.
"These aren’t the same thing," he said, half to himself. "A goal is what someone expects of you—future. A result is what the business is already counting, numbers showing what has already happened."
Relevant Business Result: A metric the organization already tracks because it matters, whether anyone set a goal against it or not. Not what someone expects of you. What the business is already counting.
She looked puzzled. "OK. Then which of these is the business already counting?" Ingrid asked, turning the stack around.
“Let’s try to connect you to shared metrics our executives care about. You brought up on-time delivery of your logistics plans. That’s a great personal goal, but we’re looking for a metric that you influence but don’t fully control.”
Ingrid looked concerned. “But doesn’t that make my success dependent on others?”
“Yes,” answered Reid. “This metric recognizes that we’re always influencing and being influenced by the team we’re working with. The Relevant Business Result keeps the focus on team value, not merely individual value. We’ll focus on the individual value you bring in the next metric, the Value-Added Output.”
The mapped-out connection from Ingrid’s Relevant Business Result to an executive metric was enlightening:
Product Utilization Rate >
Customer Retention Rate >
Customer Acquisition Cost >
Operating Margin
“That’s fascinating,” Ingrid remarked. “Now I can see my part in the company’s success. I wonder how else I connect.”
Ingrid tried to map out her other goal of two process improvements per quarter. Feeling frustrated, she said, “I think I’m dealing with a ‘how-to,’ not a result.”
The next conversations went faster than he expected. They were all on the same team, working the same pipeline, and it turned out more than one of them moved a result similar to the one Ingrid had named—different outputs feeding the same kind of number.
Reid nodded. “It appears so. Let’s see what fits this next worksheet. It might be a Value-Added Output. We’re looking for what you do, that when done successfully, moves a Relevant Business Result. Does a process improvement move the product utilization rate?”
"Not really. But I build the implementation plans myself. Fourteen delivery logistics plans in the last twelve months. Eleven landed on schedule. Two finished early. One slipped by three weeks."
“What happened with that one?” Reid asked.
“It didn’t mesh,” Ingrid said. “My plan only holds if it lines up with what Devon’s promising the client, what Dani’s already done in intake, what Tomás already knows from the last account like this one. That one shifted three times before anyone told me. By the time it reached me, the schedule I’d built didn’t match reality anymore.”
“I think you just made it easy to capture a Value-Added Output. Let’s complete the form. Will ‘an implementation plan’ work as title, or what the form calls a noun or noun phrase?”
“Sure, that works.”
They worked through the other form elements, measurement period, criteria for successful achievement, and what an event an event looks like, realizing that Ingrid had a good idea of her value.
Reid stared at her. "You knew those numbers, right off?"
"I track them," she said. "I’ve always tracked them. I just enjoy tracking things. I can tell you the average time it takes you to get served at all the lunch restaurants nearby."
"Why haven’t I ever seen this?"
Ingrid looked at him with a patient expression, deciding how directly to say it. "You never asked."
He had not asked. In four years. But now, For the first time, Reid knew the value Ingrid was producing. So did she.
Ingrid had one more question. “So what do I do with ‘two process improvements per quarter?’”
Reid shook his head. “I think we made a goal that would only make us busy. Not necessarily bad, but not tied to what matters.”
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