Tracking team success - Process Improvement or Perfection ?

Metrics help leaders and teams understand how a team is performing. Some dictionary describes them as the key performance indicators used to better understand a teams progress and where improvement is needed in the team . Metrics can be of different types which includes but is not limited to: Quality metrics, financial metrics, productivity metrics, key performance indicators, customer-oriented metrics and others. These different types of metrics track various aspects of the teams work and helps to shed light on the improvements needed in these areas. Quality metrics for example can track the quality or standard of the product and how it aligns with laid down expectations. It can for example be measured by how satisfied the customers are that use a particular product. In order to be able to measure this, surveys can be sent out to customers to gather customer feedback.

However, whilst these various metrics are important in order to understand the quality of the work produced by a team, it should be understood that these metrics might not portray the full picture of a teams productivity, effectiveness or efficiency. Making the conversation just about outcomes, increase in numbers, hitting targets and man-hours spent on the work by a team often times do not give a clear picture of the level of productivity or effectiveness in that team. A holistic and more meaningful approach of viewing a teams success should be embraced- one that looks deeply into process improvement instead of perfection. This approach has been proven over time to lead to long-term achievements and better product quality from a team.

As much as hitting targets are important for example, focusing too much on targets can send a team on a downward spiral. One that causes overthinking, increases anxiety, increases fear, reduces learning - because mistakes are frowned at - and stifles creativity. By focusing on process improvement on the other hand, teams can handle tasks efficiently, solve problems faster, embrace mistakes as a part of learning, think creatively and have stronger collaboration - which will eventually lead to having better and sustainable results.

Since whats considered perfect in a particular year can become quickly outdated in a different year for example, it becomes very tricky for teams to really measure, understand and attain what perfection is. Teams who aim to attain perfection can quickly become obsessed with excessive revisions. These obsessions can lead to stress, time wasting as well as slow decision making. Small consistent improvements of the teams process on the other hand, will boost the team members morale which leads to better product quality and a more efficient team.

In order to measure or track a teams success, a good approach will be to look into how a team is improving overtime, celebrate small wins instead of focusing on hitting large targets, encourage a culture where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, promote a culture where every team members opinion matters and encourage feedback from product users. Organisations that value attaining sustainable growth and improvement should embrace agility and understand that process improvement is a much more sustainable way to measure a teams success instead of the unsustainable drive for perfection.