Choosing metrics that align with company values

There are so many ways to measure what we’re doing – and the impact we’re having – as business owners and as companies. How do we choose the metrics that are the best fit for us? The metrics that are measuring the things we really care about? We all know what the standard, accepted metrics for companies are, but are these pre-packaged metrics aligned fully with our company values? It’s worth thinking about. It’s worth thinking about because if our metrics are truly aligned with our values and mission, they can be invaluable when it comes to steering our ship.

One of the ‘metrics themes’ that we’ve been moving towards more and more here at Growmotely is ‘quality over quantity’.

Why are we moving towards this? 

We’re moving towards this because it helps us focus on what is truly important. It’s making us more efficient. We’re experiencing greater returns on our time investments. We’re adding more value to the people and companies we serve. And: we’re experiencing more meaning in the work that we do as individuals and as teams.

That’s the why. And the how?

Well, here are some things that we’re doing to embody more fully this notion of quality over quantity.

Working to outcomes rather than counting hours worked:

Here at Growmotely, we don’t ask our team members to ‘count hours’. If someone wants to keep track of their hours worked, he or she is of course welcome to do so – but nobody needs to report those numbers to anyone. Instead, we work to outcomes – and high-quality ones, to boot. This approach helps us to develop autonomy and communication skills – getting what needs to be done by when it needs to be done is the responsibility of each one of us, and if someone is struggling to follow through on his or her commitments, it is that person’s responsibility to ask for help. There can, of course, be a place in some companies – and in certain situations – for ‘counting hours,’ but we’ve found this metric by itself to be, decidedly, incomplete and often unhelpful.

In the Community Growth Team:

The most recent report from our Community Growth team announced a shift in strategy: steering clear of ‘vanity metrics’ and focusing more on sharing information that reveal Growmotely’s commitment to quality over quantity. A conversation had taken place amongst some of our team members that resulted in a shared awareness that “the level of alignment of the companies we bring into our ecosystem is much more important than how many we bring.” With this realization came a shift in strategy which resulted in booking “the same two meetings by reaching out to eight truly aligned companies, as we got from sending 100 messages to companies that were ‘just hiring’.” Beautiful.

By way of our All-Company Team Meeting:

A few months’ back, we decided to change our All-Company Team Meeting from a weekly meeting, to a monthly meeting. The business was evolving, and the rhythms and rituals that we had in place needed to evolve with it. As our team was growing, it became apparent that not everyone was getting a sufficient return on investment of their time – especially given that the meeting times (because of our global distribution) can be inconvenient for some. Time to recalibrate! Moving to the monthly format, has given us an opportunity to re-define the tenor of the meeting and deliver more bang for our buck – since we know we only get one shot at bringing everyone together every month. We now keep our focus on ‘values stories’, group visualizations, and reviewing our key numbers. It was by noticing the drop-off in quality of the weekly meeting, that allowed us to re-invent a higher-quality / lower-quantity all-company meeting ritual.

In the Brand & Marketing Team:

One of the simple ways we strive to embody quality over quantity in the Brand and Marketing team is by refusing to stick to ‘output schedules’ simply for the sake of it. Our CEO and Founder Sarah Hawley, for example, sends out her RISE thought leadership piece when inspiration strikes – no sooner and no later. Similarly, with the other newsletters we send out to our various communities, we – by principle – have committed to valuing quality over quantity, and would prefer to disrupt our schedule, than send out something that doesn’t add value to our readers.

Via Sarah’s Leadership:

And speaking of RISE, if you took the time to read Sarah’s latest (incredible) piece – ‘Play the game, so the game continues‘ – you would have noticed the fingerprints of our thirst for ‘quality over quantity’ everywhere. “The things that really matter are often harder to measure…however that doesn’t change the fact they are the things that really matter.” Sarah commits herself – and Growmotely – to playing a big-picture game that is meaningful and beautiful…and not holding on so tightly to traditional metrics and numbers that are flawed, or even worse, at times destructive.

One of our mutual muses over here at Growmotely is Charles Eisenstein. Here’s a poem that he included in his book ‘Sacred Economics’, to help us all sink deeper into a ‘quality over quantity’ state-of-being:

“We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We’ve built more computers to hold more
information to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communications;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These times are times of fast foods;
but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It’s a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.”

— Authorship unknown

Calling all leaders and teams in our conscious-culture network! Join us in creating this Future of Work. This Future of Work where we dig in and seek out the metrics that reveal and measure what really matters – and allow them to guide us.