What is the Secret to Business Success?

Is your business already killing it this year or have you fallen behind and now have some steep hills to climb as you get back on track?

Or maybe a better question is, do you know where you are really at?

It may be possible that you are not measuring the proper indicators or that the tools that you are using to measure your results are not giving you the “story behind the story.”

One of the secrets to business success is knowing what to measure and how to interpret the results!

For this post, I will assume that you have selected the correct indicator. So the question that we need to address is; “How will you report, view, and interpret this key indicator?”

Although there are many answers to this question, one great solution is to use a Rolling 12 Month Trend report.

Rolling 12 Month Trend

How Do You Track Your Strategic Priorities?

Recently I came across a nice little tool called the QPM or Quarterly Priority Management. It is essentially a simple table that can be used to effectively manage progress against your top five strategic objectives.

The QPM tool itself comes from Kraig Kramers in his book CEO Tools: The Nuts-N-Bolts for Every Manager’s Success (Book & CD) although it is not a unique idea. I have also seen very similar tools from Les Hewitt in The Power of Focus Tenth Anniversary Edition: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Confidence and Certainty (7 Day Focus) and Bill Hybels and his book Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs (6 by 6 concept – Axiom 16). However, the QPM tool is uniquely focused on monitoring your top five strategic objectives and the progress against those objectives each quarter. The following table is an example of this.