DO YOU KNOW YOUR ONE KEY TO SUCCESS?
In an increasingly confusing business landscape, one of the hardest things for organizations to do is to make the complex simple. Simplicity is the key to connecting at all employee levels, driving change, maintaining focus and delivering intentional results.
Intentional results come from defining what success looks like and simplifying it in a way that everyone can understand and apply. The "One Key" also has to be something you can measure. As the old saying goes, "you can't manage what you don't measure." This allows you to set specific targets and generate strategies and tactics to hit those targets.
Some examples of the "One Key" approach are:
Turnover Margin - In football, the team that wins the turnover margin wins over 75% of games. Teams that relentlessly focus on taking care of the ball on offense and forcing turnovers on defense end up being more successful.
Cost Per Available Seat Mile (CASM) - Southwest Airlines' disciplined focus on maintaining a lower cost structure then its peers allows them to offer lower fares while maintaining the best profitability in the industry. This also connects to their core purpose which is to "democratize air travel in America." Low fares at Southwest give most Americans the freedom to pursue air travel.
Profit Per Customer Visit - This metric has been in place at Walgreen's for decades and is key to its success. Their strategies around convenient intersection locations, add on services and pharmacy technology all were geared to improve this key measure.
Our goal here is not to suggest that no other measures are important besides the one key metric. That's simply not true.
We DO want to challenge you to think about and determine THE most important metric that drives your success and then relentlessly focus yourself, your department, your function and/or your organization on achieving success around that measure.
Your "One Key" will provide simplicity and clarity to your employees which in turn will promote engagement and focus.