Great care should be taken to articulate goals so that achievement — what success looks like and how its measured — is clear. It’s the most important step because goal quality and quantity predict success.

Have you ever had 20 goals? Of course you have, and you really had zero. Have you ever had a goal that was cool to say yet wasn’t supported by a measure or strategy to get there? Or even a goal that success was measured by, “I’ll know it when I see it.”? Yep. Me, too.

The previous examples are called dreams. Dreams are wonderful, but let’s not fool ourselves that these platitudes are goals.

Today, I want to share a story about why measures matter.

I wanted to do more executive coaching for individuals and teams in 2020. To turn this dream into a goal, I set a measure. I started with a revenue target and backed into the # of clients needed (client count goal). For me, client count is more meaningful than revenue because it brings it to life. How many people do I need to help? My client count goal for 2020 is XX.

How will I make it happen?

To achieve my client count measure, I must be laser-focused with how and where I invest my marketing and business development time, money, and energy. Content marketing will continue as my strategy, but I will adapt it to grow the size of the Dawn Celeste community. “Grow the size of the Dawn Celeste community”? Measures, please.

I’ll measure the size of Dawn Celeste community using number of subscribers. My community started as 150 friends and family in 2017 and has grown to 500 subscribers today. My leading measure — something that I can do or immediately influence — is growing my community to 1200+ members in 2020. Setting this growth measure led me to calculate monthly targets and I needed to add 60 subscribers every month. This was not attainable using my current approach and begged me to explore unfamiliar avenues.

…

Later, I was cleaning up my office and came across stacks of business cards from various events. My new clearly articulated goal prompted me to look at these business cards in a new way. These people were now prospects for community membership. Sounds obvious, but I hadn’t thought of it before.

As a result, I sent out 130 “Welcome to Dawn Celeste Community” invitations that I wouldn’t have sent before. I thought this was bold. I liked the approach to building my community until I began to question my measure. Was simply increasing the number of people that receive a few emails from me each year really going to impact my business results in 2020? Was I driving toward a measure without thinking about the how and the why and the meaning of what I was doing? Was I “gaming the system” when the only person I was fooling was myself?

I stayed with my doubts and then decided to update my measure. Instead of having a solo measure to get 1200 subscribers, I added a criterion to maintain or improve the xx% engagement.

Adding engagement to my growth count measure matters. It challenges me to seek and understand what content is of interest to others because I want to grow my community and continue producing highly engaging content. It’s not either/or, it’s and.

When measures impact decisions and behavior, they matter. Choose wisely.

What situations have you encountered where a seemingly minor tweak in a measure made a big difference in behavior?

I look forward to hearing from you.