Calls per thousand. ROI. Same store YOY comps. Close rate. Margin. Hourly sales reports.
For the last 15 years or so, my professional life—and my self-worth—have been measured at 57 minutes before the hour when my work phone vibrated and the hourly sales reports updated.
When I was finally able to untangle my self-worth from the hourly reports, I knew I was getting somewhere. I was allowing myself to be a person. Just a person. That is all.
80% of the time, I dreaded 57 minutes before the hour because something would be wrong, even if the overall picture was good. A sales team would be underperforming. An ad wouldn’t be pulling. A category would be performing way under last year.
No matter what business I was in, I constantly yearned for us to focus on what was going right instead of wrong. But it doesn’t work that way. At 57 minutes before the hour, you get your hourly look at what you need to be doing better. Now.
I’m not dissing the metrics. They make the world work. They make an economy work. They ensure that people will get paid. They make people rich, and I’m all for success.
Before I was diagnosed with panic disorder, I loved the metrics. Being ‘em on. I’m good at what I do. We’re good at what we do together. We can do this. We’re putting good into the world. Let’s be screaming successful, shall we?
It’s the proverbial slippery slope because when metrics become an obsession, when your happiness and meaning become tied to them, that’s the signal that something is wrong. I was like that for many, many years.
I couldn’t live like that anymore. I knew it on a Black Friday two years ago when we were out trout fishing and I was dreading coming home because I would be compelled to pick up my work phone and see how we were doing. And something would inevitably be wrong.
I remember sitting on the porch after a beautiful, crisp day out in the water with my husband and seeing that we were behind and my guts began to knot up. Just writing about it now makes me see how little sense it made to do that. What was important that day was the trout fishing. The time spent with Jimmy doing what we love. The blessing of being outside on a fall day in Virginia catching the speckled trout for which we had waited all year.
Yes, the biggest retail day of the year was important. But I had begun to live in fear of it. Because I allowed my identity to become enmeshed with it.
This is dangerous. No wonder people in my field end up drinking or addicted to something. No wonder I reached for the wine bottle after work for so many years. Who can live with that pressure decade after decade? I did. And now I won’t.
I knew metrics were getting the best of me when I bought a Fitbit to hold myself accountable for exercising five days a week. It was fun at first. Then it became drudgery. Another damned metric to hit and that would get reported out weekly in my email. It was slowly sucking the joy out of me.
I still wear it. But I don’t view my week as a success or failure because of it. I still chase the five days of activity, but not with the joyless pursuit of the last few years.
Metrics are toxic when you allow them to steal your joy. They exist for very important reasons in business. They do not exist as a reflection of your value in this world. Your value in this world is reflected in your human interactions and connections. The mundane moments that build trust and friendship and love. That is all.
When I die, no one will remember that I had a part in the greatest sales day in a company’s history or that I wrote and produced a radio spot that sold millions of dollars of product. Not a chance it will make the eulogy.
If I’ve done this thing called life with any grace and meaning, they will say I was a good and trusted friend, a person who loved and was loved. That is all.
Comentarios