A Practical Guide to Measure the Effectiveness of your Goals
As Peter Drucker said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Indeed, we cannot see progress unless we measure to see what is improving and what is not. Most importantly, it’s not practical to just measure everything. We have limited resources so we need to be mindful and purposeful about the things that we measure.
Last February 2022, I was fortunate enough to attend a webinar on “measuring what matters.” The speaker, Ms. Kristine Go, is a Vice President of an FMCG company in the Philippines talked about the importance of input and output metrics.
To be honest, I’m somewhat used to measuring and updating important metrics in my life and my work. But, most often, these metrics are just the output metrics. In reality, these output metrics are things that are sometimes beyond our control. Hence, it’s also very essential to measure the input metrics. What are the things that we’re doing (and not doing) to improve the results of our output metrics?
But, before we proceed with listing and enumerating our metrics. We must first define our goals.
Our goals should be:
✔️Significant
✔️Concrete
✔️Action-Oriented
✔️Inspirational
Then, identify our key actions. Our key actions must be:
✔️Specific
✔️Measurable
✔️Action-Oriented
✔️Aggressive yet realistic
✔️Time-bound
After defining our goals and identifying our key actions, it’s important to align them with our long-term plan for ourselves. Lastly, we should track our accountability. We need to list down the input and output metrics that are aligned with our goals.
Here’s a sample:
Goal: Save at least Php 10,000 per month for your dream house.
Key Actions:
- Increase your monthly source of income by Php 10,000.
- Decrease your monthly expenses by at least Php 5,000.
Output Metrics:
- Monthly Savings
- Monthly Income
- Monthly Expenses
Input Metrics
- Amount of your monthly side hustle income
- Number of social media posts about your consultation/services per month
- Number of canceled unnecessary subscriptions
- Number of canceled unused membership fees
As much as these are very beneficial for businesses and organizations, these metrics are also very much applicable in our everyday lives.
As a matter of fact, some things are out of our control. But, there are things that we can directly influence and control and in this case, these are the input metrics.
As long as we’re consistent with showing up every day, iterating for improvement, and learning from our mistakes, we can get and achieve the goals that we set for ourselves.
