The Value of Metronomics
We all know what a metronome is. A metronome is a device that helps its user stay in time. The user sets the beat of the metronome, and the metronome produces an audible click or other sound for the user to follow. The metronome is typically set in beats per minute because it’s traditionally used by musicians to help them keep the pulse when playing an instrument.
But, over the past few years, the concept behind the metronome has been expanded to help business leaders keep pulse too.
It’s called metronomics, and I consider metronomics such a valuable tool that I want to give you a very brief introduction to it and encourage you to find out more for yourself.
What is Metronomics?
Metronomics is a repeatable system that any business consisting of two or more people can use to grow value, increase productivity, save time, and ensure the business is staying on track to achieve its goals. It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, if you use metronomics properly you can be certain that everyone in the business will understand your business’ strategy and the importance of their role in it.
Metronomics was created, tested and built over more than a quarter of a century by a Canadian business leader and entrepreneur called Shannon Byrne-Susko. She’s written a few books about it that are worth reading, including ‘Metronomics: One United System to Grow Up Your Team, Company, and Life’ which is an excellent place to start.
The real beauty of metronomics is that, once the system is in place, it’s so ingrained in everything your business is and does that you’ll barely have to think about it anymore. You can concentrate on growing your business and achieving your objectives, knowing that metronomics has given you the map you need to follow.
The foundations of Metronomics
Make sure that everyone understands your vision, the processes you’re using to achieve your vision, and is committed to the business.
Once their commitment is established, build trust and cohesiveness in your team so that everybody is on the same page and working effectively together.
Now that the team knows what they’re doing, is growing in confidence, and working more collaboratively, you can focus on building momentum.
As you build momentum, and as your business continues to evolve, your team members will continue to grow and evolve too. They’ll have all the essential knowledge they need to move further up the hierarchy and coach the other team members, which creates a compound effect Shannon Byrne-Susko calls the Coach Cascade System. What that means is that the newest members of the team won’t have to wait until they’re in a leadership position to learn everything about the business it’s necessary to know. Instead, they’ll have access to that knowledge from the very beginning, which will strengthen their commitment, cohesiveness and confidence.
How does Metronomics work?
In the same way that a metronome uses an audible sound to keep the pulse for a musician, metronomics has its own pulse of:
Quarterly/90-day objectives (realistic, measurable targets ensure the business stays on course)
1HAG (1 Year Highly Achievable Goal that is realistic and achievable)
3HAG (3 Year Highly Achievable Goal that is realistic and achievable)
How does it set the pulse?
It sets the pulse through a map that you create called the Key Function Flow Map (KFFM).
The Key Function Flow Map
The Key Function Flow Map is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a flowchart of how your business generates revenue, and all the functions and processes involved in making that cash flow happen.
It’s a flowchart that everyone on your leadership team must have sight of and must all have the same understanding of what it means. If your KFFM means different things to different people it’s never going to work.
Shannon Byrne-Susko says the KFFM is “the most enabling thing you can do for your business” and recommends that “you should use it as your scorecard every week.”
Why? Because, as a leader, the KFFM gives you and your leadership team complete clarity of what your business needs to function and a real-time overview of how well it’s functioning. It subtly monitors that everyone is doing what they need to do to stay in alignment and grow your business faster because keeping your people aligned will improve their output as well as their behaviour. The KFFM ensures you’re consistently getting the best out of your team. Checking it every week will also instantly flag anything that’s not working well so you can address the issue before it becomes a problem.
In Shannon Byrne-Susko’s words, “Humans want to be connected to each other and to a plan, and if you don’t have that in place in your business it’s hard to grow your company.”
I completely agree with her.
Creating your own Key Function Flow Map
What’s the other great thing about the Key Function Flow Map? It’s structured enough for you to build in your 90-day objectives, your 1 Year Highly Achievable Goal and your 3 Year Highly Achievable Goal, but flexible enough to tailor your goals and objectives to what your own unique business needs. So long as all the ways your business generates revenue are mapped on that flowchart from beginning to end, you can set the pulse for achieving those objectives and goals as fast or slow as you want.
Over the past few months, I’ve developed my own version of the KFFM that’s focused on keeping all the critical processes in my business in line with each other. It’s exactly like KFFM in that it’s a total overview of everything involved in how the business makes its money and, just like KFFM, I’ve made sure that all my key people understand it and that everyone in my business has bought into it and feels committed to it. From that flowchart (which, because I love a good acronym, I’m going to call my C-PAM, for Critical Performance Alignment Metrics) I’ve set out my business’s objectives, set out the regular meeting schedule (as well as the structure we’ll use during those meetings), pinned down our quarterly goals and calculations, and established our 1 Year and 3 Year Highly Achievable Goals.
What my C-PAM has done is give me the breathing space to lead.
As leaders, we have an insane number of different things to think about from making sure everyone understands our vision to building a strong culture, assembling a fantastic team, keeping the execution perfect so that the business stays successful, and staying aware of everything that’s going on in the outside world so the business can respond to external changes and pivot accordingly. Getting that entire flowchart down on paper, even though it took a while and meant I couldn’t avoid asking myself the difficult questions about how the processes and widgets work and what I should do if they ever stopped working, was key to letting me do that. It means that now all I’ve got to do, once a week, is check the figures to make sure the business is still flowing in the direction my flowchart tells me it should.
Think about it like managing a football team. You wouldn’t send your team out on the pitch if you didn’t know who the other team were, which end of the pitch their goal is, and what the score is at the end of the game.
That’s the value of Metronomics, and that’s why I recommend that all leaders should use it.