What Are Your KPIs?

When WAV Group supports an organization on strategic planning, our first phase is discovery. We spend a lot of time gathering information about the business. Our process involves three methods: talk to people, survey people, study reports.

Talk to people

The first method is phone calls. We talk to a lot of people about the organization to listen to what they say and to appreciate how they feel. The interviews are as much about understanding what is in people’s hearts as they are to understand what is in their mind.

Survey your customers

The second phase of discovery is to do a survey. Great surveys are like works of art that blend industry wide benchmarking questions with business specific measurement questions to tally up the facts about how an organization is measured by their people.

Beyond the tally, we look at cross-tabs to understand differences among the various personas. Brokers may feel differently about an MLS than agents. Buyer’s agents may feel differently than listing agents. New agents feel differently than experienced agents. The entire audience will feel differently if you have recently made a service change (switched vendors).

Just for fun, we can also compare organizations to similar organizations or groups of organizations across the county. Unlike any other, WAV Group research can deliver perspective.

Look at reports

The third phase of discovery is studying results. We review financials, including cost indexing for software licenses, building expenses, adoption levels, staff expenses, and ratios to similar organizations. Our experience working with the top MLSs, technology firms, associations, and brokerage firms in America gives us the vision to identify excellence vs. performance. We know greatness when we see it.

What KPIs are good for your company?

Strategic planning is a process of determining goals. In the simplest of terms, if your strategic goal is growth, then a KPI for profitability is depreciated. Growth is something that you invest in. If your KPI is profitability, then your KPI for growth is depreciated.

There are hundreds of KPIs in complex organizations. Leadership is identifying the strategic vision for the organization and structuring emphasis on the KPIs that are vital to success. It is also the freedom to depreciate the importance of KPIs that must be sacrificed.

Avoid insanity

Avoid strategic planning that emphasizes KPIs that are in conflict. The vision to increase the size of the organization by 20%, reduce costs by 20%, and increase satisfaction by 20% is irrational. You know – do more with less and be happy about it.

Be Happy

The KPIs that are often missed by organizations are the ones that matter the most. Happy people who are having a good time will outperform everyone. It is vital to insert requirements into your strategic plan to celebrate and reward. Perhaps Ivan Pavlov knew more about business than dogs.