There is a saying in Silicon Valley: “Give someone a metric, and they’re certain to hit it.” Another way of expressing this is to say “What gets measured, gets done.”
On first blush, this sounds great. Get the right set of key performance indicators (KPIs), and you are on your way to hitting your goals. Great.
The problem is that no business is just a set of metrics which can be neatly displayed on a dashboard. It is much more than that — businesses are holistic endeavors which have to do (and succeed) in much more than a few key metrics.
Don’t get me wrong — of course, it is important to figure out what the primary drivers for your business are (read Dave McClure’s AARRR metrics as a primer should you feel lost) but don’t forget that businesses are much wider and deeper than numbers. When you communicate with your co-founders and staff, it is important to keep this in mind.
P.S. You will find that the Heretic email dispatch is changing form a bit. I am working on a bunch of ideas to make the email, our community and a bunch of future content more awesome. Stay tuned! :)