Aha Moment Monday
You’ve heard the term ‘Flight Recorder”, right? It’s nickname is Black Box (even though they’re often painted in “international orange”) and they’re standard equipment in an aircraft.
Flight Recorders measure everything from pitch, airspeed, altitude, vertical acceleration, hundreds of instruments and internal readings, as well as cockpit conversations.
They make possible the analysis of unusual occurrences by storing performance and condition information.
Now, in our businesses, we, too, employ measurables; in sales we track revenue and conversion, in marketing we watch the effectiveness of campaigns relative to sales, in H.R. we work to achieve strong employee engagement and low turn-over and in operations we’re always looking for more efficient ways of doing things. Those, and many other key performance indicators (KPI’s), are delivered on spread sheets with numbers.
I’m convinced, though, that how we get anywhere is the result of such an intricate weaving of a multitude of factors. The numbers provide a basis but what about the conversations? What about the stories between the lines of the numbers?
More importantly, what parts of that data and those stories, and to what degree, will contribute to the “ideal” going forward?
Aha – “There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel in our hearts and imagination.” ~ Leigh Hunt
While our business’ “black box” of reports can offer a statistical history of what transpired over a given period, its ability to provide direction is limited.
Sure, if you keep doing the same thing you’ll get the same results but the lesson here is in what you’re measuring.
What if you added to your list of KPI’s things like the number of thank-you cards you send, how many times you revisit your purpose and value statements, the frequency by which you completely unplug and recharge, the quality of your power team when you’re changing directions, or your level of stress or excitement on Monday mornings? (then again, you have an “Aha” to look forward to so all Mondays are good 🙂 ) Measuring attitude, gratitude, awareness, network, clarity etc., is less common but are arguably the most igniting energy sources behind what happened before and what’s to come.
Lock into your destination with all your heart, then fly, baby, fly.
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