Traction by Gino Wickman

Author:Gino Wickman
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781936661824
Publisher: BenBella
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

MEASURABLES

What gets measured gets done. Complete mastery of your Data Component is achieved when you boil the organization’s numbers down to the point where everyone has a single meaningful, manageable number to guide them in their work. This number will enable leaders to create clarity and accountability throughout their team. With a completed Scorecard, you can track high-level numbers down to a single person as the source.

EVERYONE HAS A NUMBER

The founder and chairman of a large Michigan mortgage company and a leading online mortgage lender once gave a talk at our Entrepreneurs’ Organization Chapter. This was 16 years ago, when I was running my first company and he had 75 employees. He’s a fanatic about measuring everything; at one point he told us that “everyone has a number.” He went on to explain how every employee in his organization has a number, even his receptionist. Hers was two, as in, “two rings good, three rings bad.”

His speech was a wake-up call for me. Back at my office, I came up with and implemented a number for everyone. I have since taught this discipline to every client, and it has produced tremendous results.

Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends & Influence People contains an example illustrating the power that numbers can generate among your people: Charles Schwab ran Bethlehem Steel Company in the early 1900s, and he had a mill manager whose people weren’t producing their work quota. One day Schwab asked him, “How is it that a manager as capable as you can’t make this mill turn out what it should?” The mill manager didn’t have an answer. He had tried everything. This conversation took place at the end of the day, just before the night shift came on. Schwab asked the manager for a piece of chalk and asked the nearest man how many heats (i.e., batches of refined steel) his shift had made that day. The man said six. Without another word, Schwab chalked a big figure six on the floor and walked away.

When the night shift came in, they saw the six and asked what it meant. The day people explained that Charles Schwab, the big boss, has asked how many heats they’d made, and chalked the number down on the floor. The next morning, Schwab walked through the mill again, and he found the night shift had rubbed out the six and replaced it with a big seven. When the day shift reported to work that morning, they too saw the seven chalked on the floor, and decided that they would show the night shift a thing or two. The crew pitched in with enthusiasm, and when they quit that night, they left behind them an enormous 10. It wasn’t soon before this mill, which had been lagging way behind in production, was turning out more work than any other plant.

That shows the power of giving everyone a number. In fact, there are eight distinct advantages to everyone having a number.

1. Numbers cut through murky subjective communication between manager and direct reports.

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