Metrics, Accountability
The new year bringing no respite, Layoff season continues.
Lots of CEOs with sad faces, but who all still have jobs? There’s the usual “we take full responsibility”, “changing conditions”, “need to meet market challenges”, without ever, you know, saying what any of that means.
Meanwhile, let’s check in on sports!
Haas: Guenther Steiner leaves as team principal after 10 years - BBC Sport
Bill Belichick: Legendary New England Patriots coach's exit confirmed after 24 years - BBC Sport
(It amuses me to read news about American Football from the BBC.)
Pro sports has a ruthlessness that fascinates me. Doesn’t matter if you won more Super Bowls that any other coach—a couple of bad seasons later, and you get to spend more time with your family. In the tech world, huge successes a decade ago is enough to basically get you tenure, and as long as you don’t literally break the law on camera, you’re good to go.
What’s the difference? Clear Metrics.
We spend a lot of time talking about metrics—what to measure, how to measure, what it means, how to change it, trends, velocity. “You get what you measure!” Interpretations, footnotes, “well, that’s somewhat subjective.”
Meanwhile, over in sports-land there’s exactly one metric: how many games did you win this year. It’s completely objective, unambiguous, obvious to everyone. And the culture is clear: we have one number that matters. If that number goes down, the leader loses their job. And thats clear going in. Everyone, and I mean everyone knows how their job connects to that number, how what they do does or doesn’t support that number going up. One Number. “Work Harder, It’ll Be Worth It.”
As a thought experiment, I think that’s interesting. Pick a tech company: yours, someone else’s, a friends, Apple. What’s the One Number? What’s the point where the leader needs a new job? It’s temping to say stock price, but that’s too many dominos away from the “real work”. Sales? Revenue? Percent of market? Presumably there’s a point where revenue could collapse enough to lose Tim Apple his job, but there’s a real big subjective space on top of that. If you’re Apple, or Twitch, or Discord, what’s the equivalent to “haven’t won the Super Bowl since 2018”?
The frame challenge here, of course, is not to think up the number, but to then spend the time thinking about how your job connects to it. Can you influence that number? Why or why not?