Do You and Your Employees Have Criteria for Success?  

I’ve volunteered as a judge for the Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair multiple times.  It’s a pretty fun experience.  There are students from nearby schools showcasing projects they’ve worked on to develop some potential scientific solutions to the world’s problems.  We meet other judges with Engineering or scientific backgrounds, see some of the different projects the inquiring, younger minds of today are working on, and we get to talk to some of the students to hear their points of learning and perspectives.   The experience is fun and rewarding overall but the last time I volunteered, something stuck out to me that is beneficial for small business. 

As part of the judging process we were provided a sheet with different criteria and subject matter that would be used to assess and rate all of the projects.  Every time we went to a different table with a different project, we asked the students for their criteria for success.  Did they have any criteria outlined?  Did they know what success in their project looked like?  What would determine whether their project was successful?  After I asked a few students these questions, I had a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious): Criteria for success—how genius!  Made me wonder, how many of us have set criteria to determine overall success for our businesses?  Do we have different points of criteria in our business that define success?  Does your team know the criteria so they can help you achieve it?  Not only is this important for our overall business, but we can take this one step further.  Do we have criteria that defines success for our employees or team members?  For example, if we are hiring a marketing or sales employee, do we have criteria that states objectively what they need to achieve to be considered successful?  Could we specify that they need to achieve 10 leads a month or 5 new clients a month or a minimum of a 25% conversion rate?  Do we have this criteria in place for the employees in our business to really determine whether we have actual success?  What difference would it make in your business and to your team members if they had this criteria?  Would it allow them to focus on specific activity to meet your expectations?  Would it take away their subjective worry about whether they are performing well?  Would it enable our business to hit and exceed bigger goals? 

If we don’t have this type of criteria specified in our business, how do we know if we are successful or not? My question for you? What is your criteria for success? Not just for the business but also for your employees.  How are you defining and measuring whether you are successful or not?  If you can’t figure it out contact us and we will definitely help you out.  

We offer complimentary 2-hour strategy session (a $2000 value) for businesses that want to look at opportunities in their business.  We can chat briefly about the details of that session to see if it would be beneficial for your business.