Establish your metrics

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Introduction

Metrics are sources of data you can use to measure your organization’s performance in specific activities for tactical decisions. Meanwhile, key performance indicators (KPIs) are sources of data to measure your organization’s performance towards meeting broader organizational goals for strategic decisions.1 Tactical decisions are short-term and focus on the implementation of specific actions, while strategic decisions are long-term and involve shaping the overall direction and objectives of an organization.

Both metrics and KPIs are important ways to quantify your organization’s impact; the former has a narrow scope while the latter indicates overall organizational success. Monitoring the appropriate metrics is a crucial and essential measure in order to make well-informed decisions and actively progress towards achieving your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

This tool begins with a discussion of KPIs because of the importance of understanding the broader objectives first, then will teach you about:

  1. Options for measuring your organization’s performance for both tactical and strategic decision-making,
  2. How to choose between those options, and
  3. Ensuring that you are delivering on your metrics/KPIs.

At a glance

  • Understanding what to track and why.
  • Understanding who to track, where to track, and when to track.
  • Selecting the best option for your organization and goals.
  • Key things to keep in mind when monitoring your progress across the identified metrics over time.

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Understanding KPIs

The purpose of this section is to help you monitor and make sure that you are delivering on your metrics and key performance indicators (KPI). Let us begin by first identifying your KPIs. Try not to list out too many KPIs – be realistic with your selection and prioritize quality over quantity of KPIs.

Three Categories of KPIs to Consider

01

Company KPI

Company KPIs often focus on a specific activity within your organization, including user metrics (e.g. acquisition, lifetime value of users, retention, or district buyer loyalty).

02

Team KPI

Some KPIs are unique to a specific team within your organization (e.g. your finance team might monitor cash flows, your human resources team might track turnover, your marketing team might track brand awareness).

03

Project KPI

KPIs can also be specific to a project/initiative that your organization is running (e.g. understanding what aspects are performing well/poorly and how to improve across your performance metrics).

KPI Tracking Tips

KPIs can be tracked manually (e.g. with Google Sheets), using Google Analytics, or by building a dashboards via dashboarding software. Software can be a very efficient way to streamline tracking but have onboarding and learning challenges, and many cost money.

Tracking your KPIs, no matter how you chose to do it, is important because it allows you to measure your progress and make informed decisions. There is no magic number for how many KPIs to track. Regardless of how many, below are key things to keep in mind to ensure your tracking process is sound:

Access Barriers

hourglass

Track Real Time & Historical Data

Track both historical and real time data. Historical data helps you see trends and measure progress. Meanwhile, real-time information lets you quickly spot current issues before they become bigger problems.

visibility

Use Visuals

Employ user-friendly visuals to communicate your data effectively to technical and non-technical users. This improves transparency within your teams about the process and better supports decision-making.

feedback

Get Internal Feedback

Involve stakeholders in testing to ensure they genuinely add value. Gathering internal feedback helps refine choices, guaranteeing effective benchmarks for each department, function, or role.

process

Track KPIs that Work Together

Create your own KPIs, rather than blindly adopting that of other entities. Make sure that all your tracking processes and visualizations work together to measure progress and cohesively display your performance in a specific area.

-processing-time

Reassess Regularly

As you achieve goals and grow, regularly review and update your KPI tracking choices for ongoing success. Removing outdated indicators adds value for continued growth and success.

Understanding Metrics

As you work towards your broader KPIs, metrics are an important way to track your progress on specific activities within your organization. A metric is a quantifiable unit of measurement used to assess, evaluate, and track various aspects of a process or system in your organization. The rest of this tool digs deeper into the details of tracking to help you better measure metrics within four separate components:

info

What

The metrics you track will depend on your organizational goals and objectives and should be regularly reviewed and adapted.

user

Who

Your metrics should track a diverse set of stakeholders to gain a comprehensive understanding of your performance and impact.

time

Where

You can track your metrics through various tools, platforms, and systems, all designed to facilitate efficient data collection, analysis, and reporting.

When

Tracking your metrics by regularly analyzing KPIs can provide you with a robust measure of progress.

01

Who to Track

Considering who to track is crucial to establish metrics. Ultimately, your goal is to use your metrics to track a diverse set of users and gain a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s performance and impact. For this section, we’ll specifically focus on tracking those using your services to boost their engagement. Take a moment to jot down how you would characterize key segments of your target audience or users. If you’re stuck, click to reveal example parameters below for defining your population.

Defining your users is no easy task, but we have outlined the process in a separate tool to help guide you through your discovery. We highly recommend that you use that tool to identify your users first, then return to this page to determine how to track them.

Related tool

Understand Your Users

Guide to determine your users and their needs.

Once you have an understanding of the user personas most relevant to your organization, answer the following questions:

What role does this user have in their school district?

How would you characterize the school district they serve (e.g. state, demographics, size)?

01

Where and When
to Track

Your metrics will differ based on where you gather information. Our research has shown that the most important channels to communicate with district buyers are emails and conferences.

No matter where you track your metrics, continuous tracking with a systematic and regular approach is important to most meaningfully inform your decisions.

Think of a few ways to measure engagement and impact in these spaces. Click to reveal some of our ideas to see if they match.

You can measure:

  • Response rates
  • Click-through rates
  • Content downloads

This can be easily measured by using an email service provider.

You can measure:

  • Conference attendance
  • Attendee surveys
  • Lead generation
  • Attendee participation

These can be tracked manually through surveys or via other digitized formats like QR codes.

What Metrics to Track

Metrics provide a clear and objective way to understand, monitor, and improve your organization’s performance or outcomes.

Business Metrics:

Customer
Acquisition Cost
(CAC)

The cost incurred to acquire a new customer

Churn Rate

The percentage of customers who stop using a product or service within a specified period.

Marketing Metrics

Click-Through Rate
(CTR)

The percentage of people who click on a link or ad after viewing it.

Email Open Rate

The percentage of recipients who open an email marketing message.

Social Media
Engagement

Metrics like likes, shares, comments, and followers on social media platforms.

There are two key categories for measuring your organization’s performance: engagement and impact. While engagement metrics provide insights into stakeholder interaction and interest, impact metrics demonstrate the actual effects and accomplishments resulting from the organization’s efforts. Organizations often use a combination of both to get a comprehensive understanding of their performance. 

Effective organizations recognize that engagement is a precursor to impact. High levels of engagement may increase the likelihood of achieving meaningful outcomes, but it’s crucial to assess both aspects to ensure a well-rounded evaluation of organizational performance. Both perspectives are valuable for organizations seeking to enhance their effectiveness and make data-driven decisions.

Why These Metrics

There are many types of data you can track but linking your metrics with your organization’s KPIs can ensure that the data you collect are contributing to your overall goals and objectives. For this reason, you may wish to start this exercise by first revisiting the key goals your organization is looking to achieve in the short and long term.

You are missing to define your goals?
Refer to the tool above to help you define your internal goals

Related tool

Align your solutions and goals

What are your goals and how are your products/services helping you achieve them?

Imagine you are an organization that gives free books to small children on early development stages to learn how to read and write. Here is how you might align your goals with your metrics.

Goal

Metric

Reduce
Operational Costs

Cost per Unit
To measure the cost of providing a single book

Improve the Lived
Experiences of
Learners

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
To quantify the satisfaction of learners and educators who are utilizing the books through feedback forms

Test your Knowledge

Test your knowledge and select the best metric to measure your goals

  1. Your goal is to increase trust in your organization. Which metric would you choose?

    a. Click-Through Rate
    b. Page Views
    c. Perceived goodwill

  2. Your goal is to increase the availability of your resources. Which metric would you choose?

    a. User feedback
    b. Page views
    c. Perceived goodwill

  3. Your goal is to increase the impact of your resources. Which metric would you choose?

    a. Net promoter score
    b. Page views
    c. Perceived goodwill

Tool Quiz – Answers

Test your knowledge and select the best metric to measure your goals

  1. Your goal is to increase trust in your organization. Which metric would you choose?

    a. Click-Through Rate
    b. Page Views
    c. Perceived goodwill ✔

  2. Your goal is to increase the availability of your resources. Which metric would you choose?

    a. User feedback
    b. Page views ✔
    c. Perceived goodwill

  3. Your goal is to increase the impact of your resources. Which metric would you choose?

    a. Net promoter score ✔
    b. Page views
    c. Perceived goodwill

Metrics Tracking Tips

There are pitfalls that you should watch out for when you are working to both track and use your metrics. We highlight two key ones below.

Both metrics and KPIs are important ways to quantify your organization’s impact; the former has a narrow scope while the latter indicates overall organizational success. Monitoring the appropriate metrics is a crucial and essential measure in order to make well-informed decisions and actively progress towards achieving your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Vanity Metrics

Vanity metrics are data points that may look good on the surface but do not provide meaningful insights into the performance or impact of your organization’s initiatives.2 While they might be visually appealing, relying on vanity metrics can lead to misguided decision-making and a lack of focus on what truly matters. Here are examples of vanity metrics and why they are problematic:

A high number of pageviews doesn’t necessarily indicate user engagement or the quality of content.

While a large follower count may look impressive, it doesn’t guarantee active engagement or conversions.

High open rates don’t always translate to desired actions or conversions.

Avoiding Vanity Metrics

There are many strategies to avoid vanity metrics. Two key options are aligning your metrics with your goals and focusing on conversion metrics.

Align Metrics with Goals

Tightly align your metrics with your organization’s goal by focusing on metrics that directly contribute to your KPIs. Ensure the accuracy and reliability of your data to make informed decisions. Poor data quality can lead to misguided strategies.

Focus on Conversion Metrics

Shift the focus from high-level numbers to conversion metrics by measuring how many users take desired actions. This includes making a purchase, signing up for a service, or completing a specific task.

Do not forget to always reevaluate your metrics. As your organizational goals evolve, so should the ways you measure them. Stay flexible and adjust the focus based on your changing priorities.

You are missing to define your goals?
Refer to the tool above to help you define your internal goals

Related tool

Align your solutions and goals

What are your goals and how are your products/services helping you achieve them?

The Status Quo Bias

The status quo bias refers to the tendency of individuals or organizations to prefer the current state of affairs and resist change.3 In the context of metric selection, this bias can influence decisions in the following ways

A high number of pageviews doesn’t necessarily indicate user engagement or the quality of content.

Status quo bias can lead to decision inertia, where organizations are hesitant to make changes to their metric selection. This may occur even in the face of evidence suggesting the need for adjustment due to constant and redundant deliberation.

Organizations may avoid adopting new metrics due to the perceived risk associated with change. There may be a preference for the perceived safety of maintaining the existing set of metrics. This can lead to a reluctance to experiment with new or alternative metrics that could provide more meaningful insights.

Mitigating the Status Quo Bias

Addressing the status quo bias requires a combination of cultural, procedural, and leadership interventions. Below are two key strategies to accomplish this.

Use Evidence to Regularly Highlight the (Ir)Relevance of Existing Metrics

Encourage a culture of openness to new ideas and periodically reassess the relevance of existing metrics. Foster an environment that values innovation and adaptability.

Communicate the Benefits of Change When Change is Needed

Communicate the benefits of strategic risk-taking and innovation in metric selection. Highlight cases where adopting new metrics has led to improved decision-making and organizational success.

By fostering a culture that values adaptability, encouraging experimentation, and regularly reviewing and updating metrics, you can mitigate the impact of the status quo bias on your metric selection processes.

Summary

Tracking the right metrics is an important and necessary step towards making informed decisions and working meaningfully towards your KPIs. Begin your process by identifying organizational goals and centering them throughout the tracking processes. This strategy will not only guarantee you select the right metrics but also avoid the key pitfalls that many organizations succumb to.

Key Takeaways

  • Decide what you want to learn.
  • Define a population you want to track and when and where to track them.
  • Consider the role of these metrics within your organization’s goals.
  • Avoid vanity metrics and mitigate the status quo bias as you select and monitor your metrics.

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  • 1 Kerzner, Harold. Project Management Metrics, Kpis, and dashboards: A guide to measuring and Monitoring Project Performance. 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2023.