How Do You Measure Success? You Incorporated
Most people are results driven. Results are the end of a multitude of actions or processes. That kind of thinking will destroy you. I am not saying that the end results are not important by all means they are. What I am saying is that having attention to just your end results you will miss the entire picture completely and sabotage your success. Let me explain.
Whether you are a solopreneur, part of partnership or any type of organizational structure, measures are important. The fundamentals in any business no matter what its structure has 2 major components to measure. One is Production and the other is Organization. You might think that organization has very little to do with production. I am here to tell you that organization has everything to do with production.
Having been an executive over 7 divisions and 21 department organizational structure, I know how things work. It doesn't even matter whether you're a 1 person company or 100,000 these fundamental don't change. Success can be measured in more ways than one. Do you make money first and then put an ad together? Obviously not, but just this one concept is a good place to begin. There are actually two components here. One is the making money and the other is placing an ad. We know that to measure success we need to have a statistic such as dollars volume of sales made. That is a result statistic. Ask yourself how do I arrive at this statistic?
Let us analyze this for a moment. In order to have a statistic to measure dollar volume of sales, you need to have a process in place to generate such a statistic. What is that process? If I am selling widgets, I would have to know how my dollars volume of sales is being generated. You must ask yourself the 5 questions. This is the who, what, why, where and how of a process. You would need to know who we are selling to. What are they buying? Why are they buying it? Where are they buying it and how are they buying?
These question will lead you to the first level of a process. For each of these questions to be fully answered you will have to drill down to successfully understand more of the process overall. For the sake of time I will only entertain one of these questions. Let me take the who are we selling to question.
We are selling widgets, yes those successful widgets and we find out that we are selling 85% to people in Success Ville, and 15% to Loser Town. What do these two groups have in common? They are all parents of 2 or more children that use widgets everyday. As you can see, we are now looking at these measures and the rest of the questions will naturally follow. What are we doing in Success Ville that we are not doing is Loser Town? We can continue on the what question by asking what outlets do they have in common, is there a difference in population and are ads targeting the right people in Loser Town, are we running similar ads?
Let us say we did our homework and found out that we only advertise in Loser Town once a week, yet in Success Ville we advertise 5 times a week. This would be an excellent way of figuring out what to do next to increase sales. Now we put into place more advertising at Loser town. Wait a minute do you believe that this is the end of it? This is exactly where people leave money on the table and simply forget about the entire process. What about Success Ville? Who created the winning ad? How did they create it? Could we use this elsewhere?
When you really do a full analysis of a result you will find yourself in all parts of an organization. Do these organizational areas have measure? Of course, the advertising department should be measured in many ways. What is there process? You need to go through it and develop measures that lead to the end product of that department.
This is organizational analysis as well. Let us say that this particular Ad was produced from the results of 5 surveyed groups. The department conducts 2 surveys a month. Do you wonder how you can improve the end result of your widget sales? How about increasing the number of surveys conducted? That would bring about more data and fresh information. It would not have a immediate effect on the dollar volume of sales but, the long term effect may rocket you sales statistics.
The process of measuring success in any endeavor begins with the ability to see all the flows of an organization. How they contribute to the overall results that one gets. Analyzing an organization from the top down will give you everything you need to know to supply you with information to not only double your output but exponentially increase your markets and sales.
Applications, like this is a great way to measure success. We know that the small things that we do in our businesses affect the larger results. You might be thinking, John your in the personal development business how is this relevant to personal development? Good question! Just as this is crucial for any business to be successful, it is the same tools for one to be successful in their own personal development.
I love to give examples. Let us say you want to increase your social activities. Start at what social activities are you currently engaged in? Let us say you go to seminars, you like the interaction. You have time during the week or weekends. How did you find out about the seminars that you do go to? What are their subjects? Are their any other similar subjects with events you like to attend? Is there something in the local papers of an up coming event that interest you? Where is it? Can I place it on my schedule?
Let us make it a goal to attend 2 seminars or social events per month. Start to look around and find events in your area or outside your area when your are free and book it. This is a process and the flow of it; look for an event, select the ones you want to attend, register for them, post them to your calendar, attend the event and check it off. You can measure your overall success with a graph of the goal "# of events successfully attended." You can set up a graph for every step of this process. This is how you can measure success in anything that you want in life.
This simple little example will open your eyes. You may find out there are more events in a neighboring town then your own. You may also find out that there are more events in the first part of the year than in the second. Another piece of information may be that there are more events to schedule for tele-seminars than there are for physical attendance. This is a wealth of information for you.
Yes, You Inc. can measure success. That measure takes into account not just the end result but starts from the very beginning of the process toward that result. You don't have to be a Harvard Graduate or MBA to analyze any business or individual result's, you simply must keep an open mind and understand the process. To your success!
Whether you are a solopreneur, part of partnership or any type of organizational structure, measures are important. The fundamentals in any business no matter what its structure has 2 major components to measure. One is Production and the other is Organization. You might think that organization has very little to do with production. I am here to tell you that organization has everything to do with production.
Having been an executive over 7 divisions and 21 department organizational structure, I know how things work. It doesn't even matter whether you're a 1 person company or 100,000 these fundamental don't change. Success can be measured in more ways than one. Do you make money first and then put an ad together? Obviously not, but just this one concept is a good place to begin. There are actually two components here. One is the making money and the other is placing an ad. We know that to measure success we need to have a statistic such as dollars volume of sales made. That is a result statistic. Ask yourself how do I arrive at this statistic?
Let us analyze this for a moment. In order to have a statistic to measure dollar volume of sales, you need to have a process in place to generate such a statistic. What is that process? If I am selling widgets, I would have to know how my dollars volume of sales is being generated. You must ask yourself the 5 questions. This is the who, what, why, where and how of a process. You would need to know who we are selling to. What are they buying? Why are they buying it? Where are they buying it and how are they buying?
These question will lead you to the first level of a process. For each of these questions to be fully answered you will have to drill down to successfully understand more of the process overall. For the sake of time I will only entertain one of these questions. Let me take the who are we selling to question.
We are selling widgets, yes those successful widgets and we find out that we are selling 85% to people in Success Ville, and 15% to Loser Town. What do these two groups have in common? They are all parents of 2 or more children that use widgets everyday. As you can see, we are now looking at these measures and the rest of the questions will naturally follow. What are we doing in Success Ville that we are not doing is Loser Town? We can continue on the what question by asking what outlets do they have in common, is there a difference in population and are ads targeting the right people in Loser Town, are we running similar ads?
Let us say we did our homework and found out that we only advertise in Loser Town once a week, yet in Success Ville we advertise 5 times a week. This would be an excellent way of figuring out what to do next to increase sales. Now we put into place more advertising at Loser town. Wait a minute do you believe that this is the end of it? This is exactly where people leave money on the table and simply forget about the entire process. What about Success Ville? Who created the winning ad? How did they create it? Could we use this elsewhere?
When you really do a full analysis of a result you will find yourself in all parts of an organization. Do these organizational areas have measure? Of course, the advertising department should be measured in many ways. What is there process? You need to go through it and develop measures that lead to the end product of that department.
This is organizational analysis as well. Let us say that this particular Ad was produced from the results of 5 surveyed groups. The department conducts 2 surveys a month. Do you wonder how you can improve the end result of your widget sales? How about increasing the number of surveys conducted? That would bring about more data and fresh information. It would not have a immediate effect on the dollar volume of sales but, the long term effect may rocket you sales statistics.
The process of measuring success in any endeavor begins with the ability to see all the flows of an organization. How they contribute to the overall results that one gets. Analyzing an organization from the top down will give you everything you need to know to supply you with information to not only double your output but exponentially increase your markets and sales.
Applications, like this is a great way to measure success. We know that the small things that we do in our businesses affect the larger results. You might be thinking, John your in the personal development business how is this relevant to personal development? Good question! Just as this is crucial for any business to be successful, it is the same tools for one to be successful in their own personal development.
I love to give examples. Let us say you want to increase your social activities. Start at what social activities are you currently engaged in? Let us say you go to seminars, you like the interaction. You have time during the week or weekends. How did you find out about the seminars that you do go to? What are their subjects? Are their any other similar subjects with events you like to attend? Is there something in the local papers of an up coming event that interest you? Where is it? Can I place it on my schedule?
Let us make it a goal to attend 2 seminars or social events per month. Start to look around and find events in your area or outside your area when your are free and book it. This is a process and the flow of it; look for an event, select the ones you want to attend, register for them, post them to your calendar, attend the event and check it off. You can measure your overall success with a graph of the goal "# of events successfully attended." You can set up a graph for every step of this process. This is how you can measure success in anything that you want in life.
This simple little example will open your eyes. You may find out there are more events in a neighboring town then your own. You may also find out that there are more events in the first part of the year than in the second. Another piece of information may be that there are more events to schedule for tele-seminars than there are for physical attendance. This is a wealth of information for you.
Yes, You Inc. can measure success. That measure takes into account not just the end result but starts from the very beginning of the process toward that result. You don't have to be a Harvard Graduate or MBA to analyze any business or individual result's, you simply must keep an open mind and understand the process. To your success!