In part 1, we talked about building metrics that capture your northstar or mission as closely as possible and the need for leads to be aware of caveats in metric definitions.
In this, I want to explore why metrics should change or evolve as your roadmap changes, products mature or pivots.
Roadmap changes
Alice works in a large company and her team’s work is a small part of the effort that ultimately moves the company’s metrics in the long term. However, she needs feedback in the short term to guide her and course correct if necessary so she goes and builds operational metrics that directionally capture her team’s contributions to the company’s metrics.
After some time, company’s priorities or your org’s priorities change. Company/org overlooked an important facet of the puzzle or they are facing a new problem on the horizon and need to tackle it head on.
One of the effective ways to mobilize a large group of people on this new change is to first figure out how she is going to capture this new northstar in her metrics. Without that foundational work, she can communicate the new roadmap as much as she wants but the team’s creativity and skills won’t be realized to their full potential. In their minds, at worst there is cognitive dissonance between what her manager is asking them to do vs what their metrics (read: incentives) are telling them to do and at best they are doing valuable work their manager is asking them to do but failing to get validation from how it is measured.
For a real-life example, check out how Bob Iger changed the way he assessed his team when they kicked off the development to move from traditional model to Disney+ DTC offering in his book Ride of a Lifetime.
Products mature or pivots
No company or product in tech wants to get off the growth treadmill but some wake up to the rude realization that they don’t have a large market to serve with their existing offering and they have saturated what they have. The fork in this stage of the product is
Invest effort to tackle adjacent market to get back on the growth trajectory
Accept the fate and invest to deepen the relationship with existing customers
In either scenario, how Alice measured her team’s success needs to change
Metrics that capture new product velocity and experimentation matter more to change the team from mindset of growth optimization to creative product thinking
Metrics need to change from ones that capture growth to ones that capture engagement, how quickly you satisfy customer needs, how much friction you reduce …
The worst case outcome in this scenario is to stick to old metrics, which slow down how team adapts to new reality.
How to recognize the need to change?
Natural points to recognize is when we observe drastic changes in product direction compared to the past. Beyond those natural stopping points, one of the ways to recognize there is a need to do above is to check how people behave when they are given the autonomy. Checks can be through project reviews or announcements and 1:1s with people close to the ground. Do they naturally pick up work that is aligned with the future we envision and the one we have been communicating? If not, then we have failed to connect the metrics with the changed mission.