Using our business statistics to coach our team
Although defining and measuring business statistics is a very important tool in managing and leading a business to success, it is even more important to use these statistics for improving your business. Rather than just looking at the numbers which represent the various areas of your business, and celebrating the ups or bemoaning downs, we need to take action. Just as sports’ coaches use statistics to help improve the performance of their teams and individual players, we as business owners or executives can and should use statistics to improve the performance of our organizations.
Before determining our actions, it is best to actually graph the numbers that we will use to measure our progress. These graphs should measure the ups and downs on a weekly and monthly basis. These graphs should measure the progress for each of the key elements of the business. Such measures should minimally include statistics for our public relations and marketing activities, sales, income, production and profits. Measuring job costs and project profits will also be a valuable tool for determining the type of work to pursue or the areas for improvement. If for example, you determine that kitchen projects are usually more profitable than bathrooms, then you would want to either figure out how to get more kitchen projects or how to improve the production for your bathroom projects.