We tend to think that the person on the top of the pyramid has the power to do whatever they wish within the boundaries of reason and the law.
To some extent this is true but there remains only five tools they can use.
Volume.
Price.
Costs.
Culture.
Strategy.
Everything in a business stems from these five fundamental tools when they are focused laser-like on customers..
A leader that has at their fingertips a few simple metrics that reflect these five tools, and focuses attention on the drivers will be successful.
The first three are quantitative. The fourth, culture, is much harder to define quantitatively. However, there are measures that will deliver insight, such as staff churn, Surveys into items such as psychological safety, diversity of training, thought, and experience, and team collaborative success.
Strategy is also qualitative, in that it cannot be measured except in hindsight, by which time, it becomes useful only as a lesson, and driver of future strategic choices.
The combination of culture and strategy, when they are mutually reinforcing, and aligned is a potent combination, that drives the quantitative allocation of resources, measured in outcome by revenue, price and costs.
Header generated by the newest shiny thing in a subsection of the toolbox: AI.
