As FareHarbor has grown, we’ve gone from a startup where everybody does everything, to a company with specialized roles.  It wasn’t too long ago that we were figuring out what was measurable and how we could use those statistics to help our employees, and ultimately our clients, reach success.  With the addition of daily, weekly, and monthly KPIs, I was afraid that employee performance would start to too heavily focus on those measurements, similar to teachers teaching to the test.  

Meeting a KPI should never be the end goal.  And you need to be careful about a hyper focus on exceeding KPIs if you’re heading in the wrong direction or your goals are too low.  To better describe this feeling, I looked towards an old TV favorite of mine, the Biggest Loser.  Below is an email I sent to our Team @ FareHarbor: 

Subject: Raising the Bar

When we started FareHarbor, we had no sense of its potential and quite honestly, no ability to create reasonable expectations. Fueled by an insatiable desire to win, to change the activity industry, and to help our clients, we always shot for the moon. It went beyond wanting FareHarbor to be the best - we’d do anything and everything to be bigger, faster, and stronger than the day before.

As we’ve grown, our expectations for each team member have changed substantially. For those of you who have been part of the family for a few years, you’ve witnessed the metamorphosis of your job targets and descriptions. Your role changed from simply “more” and “everything” to a more detailed and descriptive framework.  It’s been a scary leap as a management team to start actively measuring performance.  But the fear isn’t that the individual results will be disappointing.  We’re more afraid that an absolute focus on numbers will change our culture and dilute the DWIFT.

Today I am going to ask you to start treating KPIs as if you are a contestant on the Biggest Loser.  Now, before you snicker, please give my analogy a chance!  For those of you that have never watched the Biggest Loser, it’s a contest to see which person can lose the largest percentage of body weight.  In the show, personal trainers create KPIs for contestants.  These KPIs include calories consumed, steps taken, minutes of exercise, etc.  It’s the trainer’s belief that exceeding KPIs will lead towards realizing the contestant’s goal - weight loss.  

At FareHarbor, it’s our hope that the KPIs around each position will similarly lead you and the organization towards success.  What is success?  Broadly, we define it as personal growth, happier clients and more sales.

Without KPIs the Biggest Loser contestants would be shooting in the dark on their weight loss journey - “just be healthy as you can all the time.” By having individual KPI’s in different categories they can hone their focus on the KPIs that drive success. If in one week a contestant focuses entirely on running and loses zero weight, they might add swimming or stairs the next.

With this analogy fresh in your mind, I’m now going to ask you to think about the type of contestant that wins the Biggest Loser.  Is it a person that clocks in, hits their daily targets, and then calls it a day?  Is it a person that proactively analyzes KPIs to determine what actions are the most effective in creating weight loss?  Or is it the type of person that uses KPIs as a motivational tool to push harder?  

As a seasoned show viewer, I believe the winner uses a combination of tweaking KPIs and blowing past expectations. They are continually optimizing their KPIs for success and never waste energy focusing on the wrong metrics.  The top contestants always request feedback from their trainers and ask how they can do more.  These contestants want to win and crush their goals.  And then they they want to make the next day’s goals even higher. These aren’t the type of people to settle for “ok.” Adapting quickly is how the best win. They continually analyze which KPIs work and when they know they have a winning recipe, they stick with it and turn it up.

When the winners step on the scale, they don’t fear failure.  They embrace measurement as an opportunity to quantify their success!

With FareHarbor quickly approaching its fifth year, the amount of data we have around each role is increasing.  Our ability to figure out which KPIs will move both you and the organization further is increasing.

But, we still need your help to make our dreams of reaching the moon a reality.  We need each of you to think about your daily measurements as a Biggest Loser contestant.  Are your KPIs helping you do better?  Are they moving FareHarbor forward?  And most importantly, are you using them to push yourself further?

At the end of the day, if you’re focused on the wrong metrics, no amount of DWIFT will help. And if you are using KPIs as a new measure of meeting the average, you are never going to excel.  As a group, let’s all try to get better, bigger, faster, and stronger.

Much love, #DWIFT, #cantstopwontstop,

Lawrence