Stop Chasing Numbers and Start Driving Them Instead
Imagine you’re scrambling to hit a revenue target. You watch the J-curve of monthly sales, biting your nails as numbers trickle in, but you can’t rewind time to fix last week’s shortfall. That’s the lag measure trap.
Lead measures flip the script. They’re the high-leverage actions that predict your lag. If you call ten top prospects every morning, you’ll likely close more deals by month’s end. If you inspect every assembly line at shift change, fewer defects will reach shipping.
Yet most teams stay fixated on lag measures, praying over last month’s numbers instead of tracking the daily behaviors that cause them. Breakthrough thinking demands two criteria: a lead measure must be predictive of your outcome and influenceable by the team. Resistance, red tape, or external dependencies? Dump it.
Once you find the true predictors under your control, tracking them becomes a daily compass, pointing you toward success rather than reacting to what’s already happened.
Pick one outcome you care about and list the behaviors you believe drive it. Then cross out anything your team can’t own. Validate the remaining behaviors by checking if better performance on them historically moved your outcome. When you track those lead measures daily or weekly, you’ll be driving your results, not just hoping for good news.
What You'll Achieve
You’ll shift from reactive anxiety to proactive control, boosting confidence and clarity. Externally, you’ll see consistent improvements by focusing on the activities that truly move your key results.
Pinpoint Your Predictive Metrics
Identify your key outcomes
List the lag measures—outcomes you care about (e.g., revenue, customer satisfaction scores, safety incidents). For each, note when you receive the data and why it matters.
Brainstorm predictive actions
Next to each outcome, jot down all the behaviors or activities you believe predict its change. Ask, “Which actions, if done regularly, would make this number move?”
Test for influence
Circle only the actions you and your team can control directly—ignore tasks that depend on another department or external factors.
Validate predictiveness
For each influenceable action, look back at recent data to see if higher performance on that behavior would have moved your outcome. Select the top one or two lead measures to track.
Reflection Questions
- Which outcome matters most to me over the next quarter?
- What three behaviors do I currently do that most influence that outcome?
- How can I measure those behaviors reliably every week?
- Which influenceable action will give me the biggest early win?
- How will I celebrate small wins on lead measures to reinforce progress?
Personalization Tips
- In fundraising: Instead of obsessing over monthly donation totals, focus on scheduling five donor conversations each week.
- In fitness: Rather than fixating on the scale, set a lead measure of four 30-minute workouts per week.
- In academics: Instead of worrying about your final grade, target completing three practice problems daily in challenging topics.
The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals
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