Milan: [00:00:00] But you know what might be, you know what might be really easy because it’s such a simple concept, is metrics ownership. Like we talked about metrics, like, you know, what are important, what isn’t. But I think that this is, this is secondary card. It’s like the metrics doesn’t matter anything unless there is a person accountable for it and accountable on looking at it and maybe talking about the difference between, just because you can measure it doesn’t mean you own it.
It might be owned by somebody else. It’s not like ownership of the metric doesn’t mean that you report on it. It means that that metric determines or measures how well you’re doing your job, how successful you are.
Ged: Okay. And I mean this
Milan: We can refund that very, very easily. Yeah.
Ged: I think this is an interesting one because different coaches have different approaches, so we might, we might see a sort of, you know, an opportunity for constructive disagreement or, or even change our way of thinking, which I’m open to on this one.[00:01:00]
Milan: If that is going to, you know, if we can do that in 17 minutes to give you a pee break, but yeah, let’s, let’s just get going.
Ged: Yeah, I can, I can push a few minutes past the, the half hour, so let’s do that. Yeah. Yep. Do you want me
Milan: Okay,
Ged: Intro for this one?
Milan: Sure. Well, you are the, you’re the model and system and process guy, so yeah. I think it’s all yours, man.
Ged: Okay. But you’ll do the intro to this card as in, ah, you know, and this card is After the shuffle. Yep. Yep.
Milan: Mm-hmm.
Ged: Welcome back to podcast. The podcast where Milan and I choose a card at random. We draw a card at random from a pack of cards just like these. Then we have a chat about it. We have a brief conversation which is a lot of fun and normally pretty interesting. Let’s shuffle the deck.
Milan: Metric ownership. Oh, [00:02:00] interesting. We’ve done a, you know, we’ve done an episode on the other metrics card. There is obviously a few of them because, you know, how can you improve something, you cannot measure it. So, you know, metrics happened when we are talking about systems or execution, all of those things.
But this is, this one is talking about one specific aspect of it. What does it mean to own? Metric and in our precon pre-conversation you said that maybe we’ll disagree on that one, so I’ll let you to state your opinion first.
Ged: Okay, so metrics are things that leadership teams and leaders in particular love to hate, because it’s. Historically, it’s a bit like meetings, you know? Companies don’t get this right. They measure something that isn’t worthwhile measuring and they don’t measure the things that, that is worthwhile measuring.
So, so first of all, let’s make an assumption that, that we are measuring the right things here because there’s no point in measuring the wrong things. But companies still often do. Now, [00:03:00] measuring the right things is one thing, but you still need ownership around those metrics. And by ownership, I mean who is actually gonna take accountability for making the number for that metric? The right one. Now, is the revenue at the right level? Are the number of leads at the right level, as in, are we getting enough leads or is the revenue at the point we want it to be? Often that’s not the case. You know, often we’re behind, often we’re behind in revenue, or we haven’t got enough leads or enough opportunities. So the question then is. Who owns that problem now? Is it the person who is accountable? Is it the person that they give responsibility to? And I’m, I’m being quite open here because I’m prepared to change my view about this because I’m not actually sure that I’ve got it right and I’ve been coaching for 10 years. So the model I have is that is accountable they are, they are the person who has to ring the bell. Make sure [00:04:00] that if the number is not heading in the right direction up or down, so if there aren’t enough leads or if there aren’t enough opportunities. Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to do the thing that needs to be done to get it right, but they need to be able to exert some influence on that person. To make sure it is heading in the right direction. So you know, if you’re 2% down on leads, well you’re probably just gonna make sure that heads the right direction. If you’re 15% down, then you’ve probably got an obligation to ring the bell and tell the leadership team, we’ve got a problem. And because it takes three months to get it from a lead to a closed deal. Got a problem for the next quarter that we can’t do anything about now because that time has passed, but here is what we are doing to get it back on track. The question then is is accountability responsibility? Well, my view is sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. It [00:05:00] depends who is responsible for bringing the action together. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone who reports to the accountable person. What’s your view?
Milan: Well, I’m disappointed because I was hoping in this like disagreement and no I am not that far from your thinking. I do believe that person who owns the metric is the person who has two responsibilities. Number one, they are the ones who have the ability to affect. That value in some way. And that could be that you know, they have the people who are doing that job, you know, affected them.
Like for example you know, your typical metric in consulting being billable hours, right? So then the head of the consulting team is probably the one who’s going [00:06:00] to own it. And then every single of the people on the team are going to own the child metrics, which is their own billable hours. And then we’re looking, looking at the top.
So they should have the ability to affect the outcome through efficiency, through planning, you know, whatever that is. And second. They need to be the one who have the ability to ask for help if that gets outta hand. So there might be the member of the leadership team that needs to escalate and say, you know, ring the bell as you say, and to be able to say, Hey, you know, we need help to do this.
Or, you know, this is really slipping. It can have a massive down.. Downstream implications on the business or on the operations as a whole. So I don’t think that we are that far. I think that you are maybe a little bit less on the ability to affect the number, and you are more on the authority to say something is wrong and then drive a change that that happens.
Well, I’m a little more on you really [00:07:00] shouldn’t be measured on something that you cannot affect. And the owner is the person who, for whom the metrics says, how is my job going? Right? If you bring it down to the concept of one a number that whatever role you are in, right? And on KFFM, you would see it.
There is generally a one number that basically tells you, Hey, this number is good. We are in decent place. Yes, there might be a whole bunch of leading indicators that will tell you what it is, but that’s, that’s the analytical part of it Ultimately. Do we have enough leads? Do we have enough billable hours?
And by enough, I mean, are we within the wrench of where we expect to be? Because sometimes having too many is, you know, as bad as having too few. Because again, the downstream implications of, you know, whatever it is that is happening, because somebody’s performance metric is probably somebody else’s leading indicator.
And
Ged: Absolutely.
Milan: We are looking at the whole system, right?
Ged: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think we’re using a, a [00:08:00] different word to mean the same thing. I mean, you are using the term effect. I’m using a term influence in my, with the way I use the term influence, that influence can be very, very strong, as in that person has complete influence on where that number ends up. Or it could be that they need to influence someone else in a different function. To do to achieve an aspect of that number. So it could be, you know, yes, this is in my control and I am responsible, but it could also be, yes, I’m partially responsible, but I’m also relying on this person, this person, and this person to do their jobs.
Milan: Mm-hmm.
Ged: Them to make sure that they do.
Milan: Yeah.
Ged: Might not be under your line management authority.
Milan: Mm-hmm.
Ged: That’s often a, that’s often a discussion point. I’ll say, well, look, you know, you know, you need to make sure this happens. Oh, but they don’t report to me. I don’t care. You’re a leader, you’re a manager.
You’ve gotta influence them to get to the right outcome.
Milan: Yeah.
Ged: That’s often a dis a real discussion point. Oh, and I’ve, [00:09:00] I’ve gotta be able to manage the people that I’m, that are, that I’m accountable for. The numbers for, nah, you just need to be a leader. Hmm.
Milan: Yeah. Or, or you need to manage the process. You need to own the standard operating procedure that leads to that. Right.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Can we agree on one point that is no matter how you define that ownership. What the definition is and who the owner is, needs to be clear
Ged: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Milan: An organization. Yeah.
Ged: Yeah. Yep. So sometimes. A, a leadership team will come to me. I mean, I, I’ll use the example of revenue. You know, the, you know, the head of op, head of operations or the co o will say, well, look, you know, you know, I’m, I’m accountable for revenue. But, you know, I actually don’t count it. You know, the, the CFO counts it, and he gives me the number at the end of the, every week or whatever. So in my mind, as in the, the leader will say this to me, in my mind, the CFO is accountable for that number. [00:10:00] And I’ll say, no, no, no. They’re just accountable. They’re just responsible for giving you the number. And the con conversation often goes, yep. The conversation often goes, well, okay, you know, it seems silly for the CFO to give me the number to put it into metronome, so I’m just gonna ask him to put it in I will allow that. But every single time we meet, I’m hiding a revenue number and I’m calling on the COO to tell me whether we are on track or off track without seeing the number. ’cause if they’re not putting it in, they still need to know it.
Milan: Yeah. And. You could use the same argument is to say that not that the CFO gives it to me, but some you know, intern in the analytical team is the one who makes sure that that number on the dashboard is right. So why they, why wouldn’t they put it in metronome or for crying out loud? [00:11:00] Why isn’t it automatically.
You know, put into, put into metro because of the behavior. Because the whole point is that if you own the metric, you need to know, and you, you, you cannot be surprised by the value in the meeting, right? Because that thing is determining whether you know your job is going well or not. It doesn’t matter where the number comes from.
The important thing is what it means and what it means to you. What it means to the team, and if it’s out of bounds of where we want it to be, what are you gonna do about it?
Ged: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: That’s the ownership, right?
Ged: Absolutely. So I think we are probably 99.9% aligned on this one. Mulan.
Milan: Or how disappointing.
Ged: I think we ended there. I think that’s a
Milan: Yeah, I think it, it ended up being a pretty, yeah. Short one. Great. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. No, I think it’s good.[00:12:00]
So, outro and or pre intro and will, we are out of here.
Ged: Yep. Indeed. And we’ll be out on time also, unless we really, really stuff the teaser
Milan: I think it’ll be all right. So let me do that for one, for once and then we’ll we’ll move on with our lives.
Ged: You, you gonna do the
Milan: Sure, sure. I can do that. Yeah,
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Can do that.
We just recorded the metric ownership. Episode based on the card of the same name. And you know, because we, we talk about metrics a lot obviously, but in this one, we focused really on the person attached to the metric, whether they’re attached functionally or emotionally, but discuss what is it, what does it mean to own a metric?
What does it mean for a metric to be owned by somebody? And also what does it often what is it often mistaken [00:13:00] for?
A little choppy, but I think it’ll be okay.
Ged: Do you want me, do you want me to come in and just add something in and Luke can just
Milan: Sure. Please. Why wouldn’t you? Yeah. Yeah. And then he, maybe he can chop me off and, you know, whatever. Yeah.
Ged: There’ll be, there’ll be an easy way to, to splice me in at the end. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So in that episode we talked about metric ownership and accountability and responsibility, and who has the job of putting the number in, which is often a discussion point in leadership teams.
So accountability, responsibility, and who does the data update? Because often they could be different people, then there’s implications. If Luke just splices that right onto the end of yours, that’s probably at the 62nd or less mark.
Milan: Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s good.[00:14:00]
Ged: Okay, so we have, I’ll pause the, I’ll stop the recording. We are, yeah, less than a minute. Welcome back to podcast. The podcast where Milan and I, and I’ll do that one again.
