What can I do to get my team to perform consistently well? In the never-ending search for improvement and excellence in your workplace, you will come across various programs aimed at making your organization faster, better, and stronger. This only means you’re going to be setting KPIs to establish good strong accountability measures in your workplace.

The idea of lead goals and lag goals is really important when you’re sitting KPIs because it’s important to know the type of goals that you’re measuring when it comes to setting up your accountability structures. So oftentimes we set measurements around lag goals. Lag goals are usually results-oriented. This means they are the direct result or output of your organization’s activity. It makes lag goals easy to measure but not as easy to improve or influence. Now these goals and things like the number of sales that are achieved or the amount of revenue that’s being produced and while these are very important to keep track of but they’re not always the most productive areas to set KPIs around because they are by definition the type of goals that lag behind the activity that we do. They only happen as a result of the daily and weekly routines that we’ve got put in place in our businesses.

“I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don’t do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.” – Michael Jordan

So while lag goals are important to measure, it’s also vital if we’re wanting to control the activity that’s leading to those lag goals and the achievement of them, we must go ahead and set KPIs around lead goals. Lead goals, on the other hand, are easier to influence or improve since they deal with immediate progress and show the likelihood that you will achieve your goals. Now, this is the activity that we’re doing and our team is doing every single day. It’s the amount of sales calls that are being made to result in the sales. It’s the number of customer interactions that we’re having that will result in the revenue being created. It’s the number of ads that are being presented on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to achieve the social media reach that we might be looking for.

However, they’re difficult to quantify and measure at the end of your effort. This is because you need to have well-defined processes and very specific tools in place to measure them. So when we’re setting our goals, make sure that you know the difference between a lead goal, which is the activity that you’re doing every single day and the tasks that you’re having your team complete.

So they are your lead goals which are your daily, weekly routine activity and the lag goals, which are the result, or the output of that activity.

The point of it all is to improve leading indicators over time to enhance your lagging indicators. You’re tweaking your operational processes to positively impact financial results or service excellence. If you’ve got a great balance of lead goals that would contribute then to the measurement of outcomes or the lag goals, you’re going to have a great setup for accountability in your workplace that not only tracks if you’re getting to the goal, but also how you’re getting there.