Do the numbers lead the way?

We believe you should take as much time managing your non-financial metrics as your financial metrics.

We truly believe that financial metrics are the bi-product of non-financial metrics.

Very often businesses are run with a close eye on Revenue, Margin, Profit, Sales, Overheads, Management Costs, Annual Recurring Income, EBITDA etc.

More often than not little else is managed with such rigour. Particularly non-financial metrics and yet these intangible metrics will often be the source of the numbers.

Your Non-Financial Metrics

How much time do you spend considering the following:

• Is your business strategy correctly set?

• Does the structure within your business provide it with the best chance of implementing the strategy?

• Are your key staff engaged and contributing fully to the business?

• Is your wider employee engagement continually refreshed?

• Is your talent pool strong enough and are the gaps in talent recognised and actively being narrowed

• Does your business operate with policies, processes and systems that ensure it is operating better than where it started, at the end of each day?

We often wonder whether the Numbers would even need looking at if every business was able to answer a firm positive YES to those questions. Any business that can, is likely to be doing really well, exhibiting increasing revenues and improving margins and profit.

Consequently, it follows that when setting any destination to enable you to understand where you’re going, that destination cannot and should not only be described in numbers. It should also address strategy, structure, key staff in the organisational chart of the future, an ambitious employee engagement betterment programme, opportunities to increase operational performance etc etc. These considerations, along with a collective vision, are as much a part of the Destination as the Numbers.

But when we speak about ‘business-blindness’ it’s these non-financial targets that most clients find difficult to incorporate into a strategy. More often than not, you’ll know they need to be better, but you simply can’t see the right route forward.

Inevitably, intransigence ensues.

Perhaps you’ve previously tried to address certain issues yourself; a written strategy, a restructure or an employee engagement programme. But you got lost along the way and eventually consigned the project to history as a difficult exercise which didn’t generate a healthy enough return on investment.

There are some critical points to recognise here…

• A strategy is nothing with a poor structure,

• Structure is nothing without employee engagement

• Employee engagement is nothing unless you continue to improve your talent pool

• Your talent pool is nothing without market leading policy, process and systems.

See how they all fold into one another? They’re absolutely interdependent and collectively, done well, will undoubtedly accelerate your business to its destination.

Each on their own, will have an impact, but it will never be the impact that most businesses are looking for. One point cannot be the focus at the expense of any other. It’s a mistake many business owners make and something we know all too well at The Uncommon Practice.

Work with us and we’ll help you set the pace to address all of these issues along the way. We’re here for the long haul, especially for clients who are 100% committed to bettering themselves.

If that’s you, we can help you to define your vision, spell out the work agenda needed to achieve it and where necessary roll our own sleeves up to provide you with hands-on support to deliver at every stage.

We know the journey is a tough one…but the rewards that lie in store when you reach your destination are well worth it.

If you need help your business structure and identifying, acquiring and retaining top talent, get in touch with us today.