Many businesses were known to manage their activities by metrics (MBO). Metrics are a measurement of the effectivity to your strategic plan. They are a tool and not the driver to how to execute a daily business model. Metrics are useful in determining your whether your strategic plan is working but business practices should not change daily or weekly to compensate for metric improvement. We all know that metrics are reviewed and demands are flowed down to improve certain elements but we cannot not fall prey to changing our mode of operation and vary from our strategic plan. If metrics indicate that our plan is not executing properly or was mis-defined during plan development, then we may need to re-group and revise our plan. However, strategic plans are derived via multiple perspectives and with concurrence of our leadership team. It is unlikely that the plan is totally flawed but a redirection after repeating results don’t meet our expectations may be necessary.
Don’t over react to short term misses. There are times you must stay the course to redevelop your business even though metrics may state otherwise. Drill down into the data and if the metrics validate that the long term improvements and enhancements are being met, continue the path. It may indicate that the risks associated with the plan were not realized at its conception and the next time you formulate your yearly plan you will now understand some of the unrealized impacts. Stay the course if the plan is executing properly. While the world seems to recognize short time goal attainment heavily, you must drive the business to new levels by step changes and in the long term you will succeed.