What’s Your ‘Personal Improvement Index’?

Listen to Les McKeown read this blog post:

Most of us operate under some sort of performance metric - revenue growth, membership growth, profitability, grant acquisition, time to hire, new customer acquisition...that sort of thing.

Whether they're self-imposed, descend from above, or are consensually agreed with others, they exist.

Usually, they're overtly stated - written down.

Sometimes they're not.

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Don't mistake the absence of written down goals with non-existence of those goals.

You might think you have no performance metric because nothing is in writing, or has ever been discussed - but all you have is no clear agreement as to what your performance metrics are.

Whether you're the founder, lead pastor, owner, leader volunteer or manager, you can do one of two things - succeed or fail. The absence of clear, agreed, preferably written performance metrics merely means you don't know when you're failing).

If you're in this category, read no farther - your learning point from this blog post is right here - go get your performance metrics agreed - even if it's only with yourself!

For most of us, it's this time of year that we begin eyeing the metric(s) - 15% up on this goal, 11% on that one, 7% on the other one.

For example, I just finished a coaching session with a client who is the owner of a $63m business with about 125 employees.

Her primary goal for this year is a 12.5% increase in revenues (she has others, related to profitability and customer satisfaction, but the revenue goal is her main driver for the year).

My question for her (and for you) was this:

"To meet your goal, how much do you need to develop as a leader?"

It's a hard question - not easy to answer. 0%? 12.5%? 300%?

I didn't know the answer, and she didn't either - but we both agreed that the answer isn't 'zero'.

So let me ask you:

"To meet your goals this year, how much do you need to develop as a leader?"

The answer isn't easy to get to, but one thing's for sure - it isn't zero.

"Whether you're the founder, lead pastor, owner, or manager, you can do one of two things - succeed or fail. The absence of clear, agreed, preferably written performance metrics means you don't know when you're failing." - Les McKeown

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One way to get a handle on this:

Here's my suggestion - have a detailed 360 degree assessment completed on you, and use that as the starting point.

Take it again in a year or so, and use the improvement over time (I know you will improve, of course!) as a best estimate of your 'Personal Improvement Index'.

Of course, you may be doing this already, in which case, I hope this article has given you a fresh way to view the results of your 360.

If not, there are a bunch of great 360 assessments out there. If you've already found one you like, go ahead and use it. If not, we have one of our own you can use - just shoot me a line and ask about it.

Let me close this article by asking you one more time (repetition is a good thing, right?):