A Harvard Business Review study revealed something striking: 78% of business leaders overemphasize lagging metrics, chasing yesterday’s game while tomorrow sneaks past them.
Think of a doctor who only measures deaths instead of blood pressure. Absurd? Yet that’s precisely how many run their businesses.
American Airlines discovered this painfully in 2008. While they celebrated record revenues, their customer satisfaction scores had been bleeding for months. A year later, they lost $2.1 billion.
The secret? Winning organizations obsess over both – what happened and what’s coming. Costco tracks employee satisfaction as religiously as its sales. When their worker happiness scores dropped in 2015, they adjusted benefits before revenue took a hit.
But here’s what most miss: Leading indicators aren’t just numbers on a dashboard. They’re behavior changers. When Microsoft started measuring developer response time, code quality improved before a single customer complained.
Great metrics don’t just measure – they move people. When you measure what’s ahead, you shape what’s ahead. Your scoreboard tells people what matters. Make sure it’s pointing toward tomorrow, not just celebrating yesterday.
