Counting Things vs. Things That Count
The measurements of value in any organization can lean heavily into counting things. Maybe it’s the number of products coming off the production line in the factory, the number of customers acquired each month, or counting the dollars reflecting the cost of operating a business and comparing it to the money received over a given time period. When we can’t count explicit physical objects or the dollar count in the bank account, we can also look at measures related to percentage of increases or decreases in any target of interest. These are based on numbers as well, but are more of an indirect indicator of value. These variations are valid measures. They help create location signals that indicate where you have been on the “map” and partially indicate next steps towards an objective, but are largely trailing indicators.
When it comes to counting, we learn the value of counting at a very early age. We could easter eggs found after an easter egg hunt as kids. We count gifts received on birthdays and other holidays. We count how many minutes before we need to go to sleep. We value counting! Usually, the bigger the number the better, unless playing golf or paying taxes, but even then, it’s a “counters” game.
For example, a hamburger joint will produce a given number of burgers a day. McDonalds makes over 6.5 million burgers a day while In-N-Out burger makes around 475,000 a day with a small local shop producing 100 to 200 burgers a day. All scenarios are “countable” but also have attributed meaning based on their given context which informs expectations. Meaning, a McDonalds producing In-N-Out numbers would be business devastation. Numbers are indicators, not intrinsically good or bad as a set of numeric values but context provides the interpretation backdrop. What about the things that you can’t count, at least not in that direct cause and effect kind of way?
Think of the functional areas of any organization and the definition of success for their operation. A sales organization is counting sales targets and related metrics. Production and execution teams count completion of tasks, deliverables, budgets, timelines, and completed milestones. We assign “leaders” to groups like this and essentially set the expectation that their job is to “lead” people to the desired results that are being counted. In addition, compensation and promotional incentive are usually based on these numbers. So leaders are dispatched and inserted in organizations to make these things happen, get it done, and “achieve”. This is valid to a point but frequently left out of the equation are a few characteristics that are hard to equate because they are not numbers. I am referencing the “other” parts of leading that can be easily neglected, poorly understood, and difficult to identify and quantify.
Leading can be a function in service to things you don’t count. These seemingly opposing expectations to count or to not count are problematic. It may be that the most impactful attribute of performant leadership is one we are least aware of and least equipped to exercise. A leader should not only be able to set a tactical performance target, like a sales number, but beyond that, a leader should be able to set the more significant destination down the line. Ticking off near term milestones while forgoing the primary direction you need to be heading to achieve the larger goal, can leave teams and organizations careening off course in dramatic fashion or more subtlety one degree at a time.
Setting the larger vision and strategically aligning and sequencing the milestones to get to the destination, is the compass. Leaders, above all else, are the compass bearer. How is your compass working? Leaders determine the destination for the future, they communicate the direction to take to get to that destination, and they map and guide the path to get there. This is not as counting-centric in practice as tactical measurements. The job of moving groups of people who are diverse at every level in how they see, hear, and interpret communications and behaviors, adds up to being a significantly non-numeric exercise that becomes an art form of interpersonal interactions. The skills and abilities of a leader are primarily to generate clarity, guide, and enable adaptability for managing ongoing change. These characteristics of leadership are not things you can count, yet they are the key qualities that organizations absolutely must count on for performance and success.