What you measure you manage
There’s no doubt about it, the economic climate is putting everyone under a lot of pressure. Which is why it’s more important than ever where you invest your money and energy in your business, and that you see some sort of return for that investment.
To help you do that, you need to constantly test and measure the results of your activities.
Now, there are six basic steps to test and measure that will make sure you have the very best data at your fingertips, the type of data that is guaranteed to make your decision-making process so much more informed and objective.
We’ll look at the steps in a bit more detail below but in a nutshell, these steps involve closely monitoring your activities and adjusting them every few weeks or so depending on results, monitoring them again and finally using the results to drive decisions about where you go next in your business.
The 6 Steps to Successful Test and Measure
When you start to test and measure, first focus on the areas that will make the most positive impact on your business as they improve.
That’s step 1 of testing and measuring – choose which area in your business you want to measure initially and then monitor the activities in that area. Start gathering the data that will give you a starting point for continuous improvement.
The next step, 2, is to prune, modify or increase specific activities depending on the results you see. Be careful though, don’t change too many variables at once, keep things manageable.
And then Step 3 is to continue to test and measure that area where you have made changes. Start slowly, don’t take it all on at once. Begin with one process or specific task and improve, adapt, and improve on it until you see the results you want.
How do you know if you are heading in the right direction?
Well, if you have been following the first few steps – measure, adapt, measure again, you’ll should be noticing some change by now. If that change is positive, if it’s an improvement on what you were doing previously, then you’re heading in the right direction. No doubt about it. If not, there may be more areas you need to tweak and adjust before moving onto the next stage.
However, once you are happy with the results, it’s time step back, consolidate and let those changes lie for a while. This way you will be able to measure whether the improvements are sustainable and not just a temporary blip, before you move onto the next step of continuous improvement, identifying another area in your business to test and measure.
If you routinely implement the 6 key steps to effective test and measure in your business, you are bound to grow your business the way you want to.
Remember, what you measure you manage, and what you manage improves your focus and decision making, which then helps you and your business to grow.
If you are not sure where to start, why not take our quick 3 minute Next Level Assessment Quiz. It’ll help you identify what areas to focus on at the moment, and includes a complimentary coaching session to chat about the results and how to take things forward in your business.
