Page 149 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

138 HBR Leader’s Handbook

with digital placements once and then not buying again. So the salespeople
couldn’t build a book of repeat business that they could keep adding to. She
then stepped back with her team and asked how they could measure the
likelihood of repeat placements and found that “page views” (a measure of
how many people actually looked at a digital ad) were a good predic- tor
and something that the operations team (another part of the company) was
already tracking. She then added page-view data to the regular met- rics,
which enabled her team to identify the probable repeat buyers and the types
of ads that were most likely to succeed. Armed with this data, the team was
able to increase sales significantly in the following months.
You will need to track a number of metrics simultaneously. That’s why
the outcome from answering these questions should be some form of
dashboard or what Robert S. Kaplan and David Norton call the “balanced
scorecard” in their HBR article “The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That
Drive Performance.” The basic idea of a balanced scorecard is to construct
the right suite of measures to help you drive results for your team or orga-
nization—financial and operational, retrospective and prospective, quan-
titative and qualitative.
Having the right measures is only the beginning, however. You also
must check in regularly with your team: that’s where operational cadence
comes in.

Set an effective operational review cadence
The thirty-day check-ins that Macia instituted for her rapid-results teams
were critical forums for assessing progress and making midcourse correc-
tions. But they were only part of the overall operational review cadence
that Macia used to ensure that everyone’s efforts added up to the results
she expected. These regular reviews also included quarterly all-employee
progress updates, weekly senior team meetings, regular one-on-ones with
direct reports, and more. Despite the fact that much of her schedule was
variable—filled with traveling to customers, meeting with her XL bosses,
and handling unexpected events—the internal rhythm of meetings that she
created allowed her and everyone on her team to keep the work on track.