Having the proper tools or tactics to measure the success of your company is just as important as achieving success itself. No matter your chosen field, business is a constantly evolving organism. Due to this constant change, the tactics and objectives used on your last project may or may not work on the next. One way to ensure you are being as efficient and profitable as possible is to implement a tangible system which measures your team’s overall success.
1. Take Away Evaluation – It is important to look at the big picture. By revisiting your initial goals and objectives from the beginning of the project, it will be obvious whether or not you achieved the desired outcome. Ask yourself and your team various questions:
- Did you meet or exceed your goal?
- Did you gain the outputs you wanted?
- Were all of the goals realistic?
- Did we set the bar high enough?
- How did our goals evolve throughout the process?
Honestly answering these questions will allow you to gain insight and continually set and achieve lofty, yet attainable goals from client projects to internal development.
2. Team Evaluation – A team can never reach their full potential unless they are taken care of first. This may seem contradictory to the long-standing notion of putting the customer first; however, exceeding the customer’s expectations is directly correlated to providing your team with the necessities to excel. Ways you can continually evaluate your team culture is to ask if your team grew closer and stronger during the process.
- Was your team built up in the process?
- Do you feel a sense of accomplishment for your individual contribution?
- By reaching this point of success, does your team have freshly fostered enthusiasm to attain new goals?
3. Efficiency Evaluation – Every organization would like to claim that they are efficient in every moment and with every dollar but like anything, there is always room for improvement. Look at all the small or large steps you took to reach the endpoint. Did all efforts contribute to the final outputs? Eliminating useless steps will free up time to complete fruitful tasks. For example, one of the most impractical endeavors is compiling data for the sake of compiling data. If you never use it, it hampers your efficiency and ultimately, your success. Be sure your efforts are always guiding you to the main goal.
These steps can be completed in any specific order but the completion of all of them is essential to obtaining an accurate measure of success. Even if you aren’t satisfied with your responses to some of the questions, you’re already ahead of the game by addressing the issues or areas to improve.
David Wagner is a Partner of STF and is responsible for managing the performance of the company, developing the firm regionally and leading client outreach.