As CCAW scaled, I began noticing issues. We were growing so much and had so many things going on that it was hard for the team to keep up. And we weren’t measuring their workload. Generic questions like “How are things going?” weren’t cutting it. Then one day a complaint reached my desk, which meant it was already out of control. Digging in, I realized we’d taken on too much growth. We were stretching the team too thin. We’d hit an inflection point.

We reworked our processes and added to our team to ease the strain. We identified the three or so top metrics for each team. We systematized the metrics so they auto updated daily and added them to dashboards accessible to everyone. And we took it one step further and had our system email the dashboards to the entire team every morning.

This all made a big difference. Other leaders and I were able to recognize, based on data, when we were approaching inflection points. We made sure to stay ahead of them and not stretch our team again. Other interesting things also happened. Metrics improved across the board in every area. Our team was more self sufficient and required much less management. Our daily standups got shorter and everybody was crystal clear on what they needed to do. The dashboards were giving everyone clarity.

Those metrics and dashboards did wonders for us. They helped align everyone with what mattered most to the business. It was one thing to communicate orally and another for everything to be reinforced regularly with metrics.

Understanding what matters, measuring it, and sharing those metrics will help a company of any size. Even if it’s just a team of two!