How to measure team performance in a small business

Goal-setting is SOOO important for small businesses who want to get results and ultimately grow. Teams need goals to help them understand what to achieve, and they need to know the role they play within the team and tracking progress and success is important. This blog focuses on how to measure team performance in a small business and what’s working for me and my clients. 👇

OKRs OR KPIs?

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results.

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators.

When it comes to goal-setting, you can use a combo of the two. It’s not always a case of choosing one to use, because they both do different things.

1. OKRs are typically the quarterly goals you want to achieve. Plus, the results that help you to reach those goals. See my example below. 👇

Objective: A 20% increase in online sales by September.

Key result one: All our new products will have been uploaded onto our website by July.

Key result two: Website visitors only have to click twice to buy any of our products.

Key result three: Discount codes are available each week on social media to encourage online purchases.

2. KPIs are the ongoing things you measure, to assess the operational health of your business.

For example: 👇

KPI one: Number of online visitors each day.

KPI two: Number of online sales each day.

KPI three: Average time on website per visitor.

Can you now see the difference between OKRs and KPIs? 👀

BEING A SMART COOKIE 👌

The beady-eyed amongst you, will have noticed that the OKR and KPI examples above, are SMART. In other words, they’re:

✅ S – Specific. So there’s no room for doubt.

✅ M – Measurable. So you can see if you’re on the right track (or not).

✅ A – Attainable. So they’re taken seriously by your staff.

✅ R – relevant. So they make sense to people.

✅ T – Time-based. So you generate a sense of momentum, AND you know when you’ve reached them.

Making sure your goals are SMART is a really great way of checking the quality of your goals.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOAL-SETTING AND PERFORMANCE 

In the absence of goals, we run our businesses blindly. Our staff come into work each day, doing what they did the day before – without any knowledge of what you’re trying to achieve in the longer-term.

Imagine doing a daily task, and not being 100% sure why you’re doing it, or why you’re doing it that way. Can you think of anything more de-motivating?

That’s why there’s an intrinsic link between goal-setting and how we perform. Having goals motivates people and encourages them to be accountable for their actions. 🎯

It’s like announcing on social media that you’re going to do a 10k run for charity. Why do people do that? Simples! It’s so that they’re held accountable, and they receive motivation from those who like, share, comment, and pledge. 📲

THE BENEFITS OF GOAL-SETTING

Everybody needs a sense of purpose, and a reason for being – including your employees. And it’s goals that create that feeling of belonging to a team, and the emotional connection that employees have to your business.

For your team, goals provide:

💪 Motivation

💪 Focus

💪 Direction

💪 Self-worth

💪 Clarity

As the boss, goals:

💪 Allow you to achieve your business ambitions

💪 Enable you to prioritise company activities

💪 Facilitate performance feedback

💪 Help you to recruit, reward, and develop your staff

Read a past blog I wrote that talks about how singing from the same hymn sheet can get your team working better together.

A FEW METRIC MYTHS TO BUST 👊

Whether you use OKRs, KPIs, scorecards – or some other way to boost performance – watch out for the ‘metric myths’. There’s a hell of a lot of them out there!

Take these for example…

❌ Goals aren’t changeable – of course they are! They should be flexible enough to adapt to the changing nature of your business.

❌ Goals need to be made at the start of the financial year – utter tosh! They can be made at any time. It’s true that goals are usually intertwined with bonus payments. But, they should be flexible enough to accommodate tweaks no matter what time of year it is.

❌ Goals are made by the boss – nope! There’s heaps of research that shows when employees help to set goals, they’re more likely to achieve them.

WHY SMALL BUSINESSES PUT IT OFF

If goal-setting is so critical, then why do so many small businesses not bother?

In my experience, small business owners are the busiest of people. They’re often SOOO busy doing the doing, that they fail to look up and figure out what they want the future to look like.

It requires time away from the day job, and bags of brain power to articulate what has to be done, and when by. It’s flippin hard work, right? But, it’s one of the most crucial tasks for you to do.

If you really can’t face it, don’t forget you can book a FREE consultation with me to chat about how I might be able to help you. 📲

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