In a Fast-Paced, Ever-Changing Environment, Are You Moving at the Speed of Change?

By nature I am a long-term thinker. I want to see the bigger picture and I am not a huge fan of chasing a number or results on a day to day basis. Of course there are daily metrics that can be useful; most should be behavior-driven. Those are what you can control each day. But now with a world that seems to continue to throw curveballs at businesses on a weekly basis, what are the right cadences for measuring the business and not falling behind, or making decisions too hastily?

Are you moving at the speed of change?

It really feels like the current pace is far accelerated from what we experienced in the past. What happens or changes in a week now, may have been similar to what a month conveyed previously. This is not an assault on workload or productivity. I know everyone is probably trying to accomplish a month’s worth of work in a week now also, but that is not what I am talking about here. This is the shifting dynamics of news cycles, consumer behaviors, and external factors. There are volumes of information coming at everyone each day.

Earlier this year I wrote in Resetting Goals for a Year That Has Changed Dramatically how weeks now are more like months were previously. Months are now like quarters. The pace has changed exponentially. Not only do we need to stay on pace individually, but our businesses need to as well. Moving quickly has its pros and cons. Everyone likes to get fast results and be able to do something right away. While waiting seems like you’re not doing anything at all. Yet, moving too fast can lead to hasty decisions and missing information. It really is about finding that right balance and ensuring you are measuring the right things for the time frames you have established.

Giving additional weight to each time frame can be helpful in identifying the subtle changes that may become meaningful quickly. A week needs to matter more than it did in the past. Viewing trends instead of snapshots may be the best approach – I have always been a proponent of looking at trending charts to see performance and progress over periods of time versus seeing the singular view you get when only looking at week, month, quarter and year to date results. You can miss the changes within those windows; weeks begin to blend into the month and months into each quarter. Charting your performance allows you to see the movement within the periods of time – this is where the best learning can come from.

With the pace as quick as it is, seeing micro-trends in your data can be the best way to inform the decisions you need to make. The evaluation cycle and times from analysis to action simply must be faster right now. That introduces risk to every situation, but maybe less risky than not having the data and acting quickly. Establish those expectations with your team so they understand how and why this may be different from what has been done in the past. With that, everyone can align on time frames and the steps necessary to keep up with the speed fo change.

In our next article, we will look at how you can keep up with the quickened pace. There is a need to balance the measure you have to ensure we are capturing both qualitative and quantitative metrics to guide your decisions and business.

What are you doing to keep pace with the changes you are experiencing?

I also recently discussed this topic and some of the ideas from this series of articles with Graeme Grant , CEO of Blueday, on their webinar Measuring Store Performance in Turbulent Times: Defining Your Key Metrics for 2020 and Beyond.

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