How Do You Get Consensus on What Metrics to Track?
You get consensus on metrics through a structured process — building agreement with stakeholders, socializing the metrics across functions, auditing available data, plugging gaps, and editing ruthlessly — combining top-down and bottom-up input. Consensus matters because metrics only drive performance when the functions that contribute to them agree on what they mean and why they matter.
Defining the right metrics requires both directions of input. Top-down, you establish which metrics matter to the business; bottom-up, you appraise whether you can actually deliver each one. Before committing to a metric, examine the data points that feed it — whether the underlying data is available, how frequently, and how reliably — and assess whether you have the technology, tools, and talent to track, access, and analyze it, or whether that requires investment.
A five-part process builds the consensus:
- Build consensus. Work with senior stakeholders, including sales and services, on expectations of marketing performance — being specific about how operational plans support the marketing strategy and how that strategy supports business goals.
- Socialize the metrics and identify functional contributions. Assemble the marketing team and representatives from sales, service, and other areas to break metrics into operational levers and see how each function contributes and ladders up to strategy.
- Audit and stratify available data. Build an understanding of the availability and quality of operational and tactical data, mapping out the metric taxonomy and being clear about where the gaps are.
- Plug the gaps. Where key data is missing, determine whether it can be substituted with a near-term proxy and sourced more reliably later — for example, building a proxy from a partner's overall revenue contribution when direct transaction data isn't available.
- Edit ruthlessly. Because too much data impedes decision-making, choose only metrics material to decisions, and review reports periodically with stakeholders to prune and adapt as relevance changes.
This process produces metrics the whole organization understands and trusts. By combining top-down priorities with bottom-up feasibility, socializing across functions, and continuously pruning, the CEO secures genuine consensus on a focused set of metrics — which is what lets the hierarchy actually drive aligned business performance rather than becoming a contested or bloated set of numbers no one acts on.
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