Management without Measurement Kills Careers
Management without measurement is impossible, because opaque workflow leaves leaders, managers, buyers, sellers, and planners without the information they need to deliver campaigns and track results. When teams aren't aware of responsibilities, deadlines, and deliverables, mistakes and missed deadlines fall on the leader, while disorganized workflow hides billing, margins, and which products, markets, and teams are profitable. If you can't see the forest for the trees, the workflow is to blame, and you must replace it before a client, stakeholder, or executive replaces you.
- Leaders are forced to decide without enough information when workflow is opaque, even after spending heavily on coordinators.
- If workflow doesn't make everyone aware of responsibilities, deadlines, and deliverables, mistakes and missed deadlines ultimately fall on the leader.
- Opaque workflow hides team workload, making it impossible to know whether you need more or fewer staff and in which functions.
- Disorganized workflow prevents tracking of monthly and quarterly billing, margins, and which products, markets, partners, clients, or teams are most profitable.
- Inefficient, overly manual workflow lowers top-line revenue and erodes margins, and the lack of visibility can kill careers and companies.
In our previous blog post we discussed how a poor workflow system, or lack thereof, harms your front-line team and bottom-line revenue. But what about your management teams? The local managers who keep salespeople, media planners and buyers happy. Or the managers at regional or corporate levels who make organizational decisions.
As leaders, we face the challenge of making decisions without enough information. But why do so if it’s avoidable?
Let’s look at challenges caused by management without measurement.
The Domino Effect
From a leader’s or executive’s point of view, difficulty starts with lack of information for managers, buyers, sellers and planners to execute upon. You want your teams to seamlessly and flawlessly deliver on campaigns. And they should have information at their fingertips for consistent, transparent communication. Without this, your teams are sure to fail. Despite hours spent in disparate workflow platforms, and dollars poured into coordinators, you won’t learn of issues until too late.
Ultimately, as a leader you’ll be in no better position than your marketing managers, buyers, sellers and planners. If your workflow doesn’t make everyone aware of campaign responsibilities, deadlines and deliverables, mistakes will be made and deadlines will be missed.
That falls on you.
And if your workflow platform doesn’t keep you informed, early and often, a growing number of walls will fall on you.
The Questions
If your workflow is opaque:
- How do you know how busy each of your teams and people are?
- Do you need more staff? Less?
- At what functions? How do you know?
This can lead to incorrect selling, buying, or placing, which impacts campaign delivery. This, in turn, harms your ability to execute for clients or stakeholders by preventing a comprehensive view of results. Then your team makes mistakes which eat into profitability, and erode client and stakeholder confidence.
If your workflow is disorganized:
- How can you keep close track of monthly or quarterly billing?
- How will you measure margins and project profitability?
- Which products are most profitable or productive? What about your markets, partners, clients or teams?
What manager or leader doesn’t require clear, day-to-day visibility into each of these?
As a manager, these individual issues can combine to kill careers, if not companies.
An inefficient, opaque or overly-manual workflow results in your team selling less, and producing less top-line revenue. This eats into profits, margins and ROI by wasting time and requiring additional, non-productive resources “pushing paper around”. And the lack of visibility prevents you from efficiently managing your teams’ and your business’s results.
The Forest for the Trees
If you can’t see the forest of your business for the countless trees blocking your view, odds are your workflow is to blame. So, you must replace your workflow before a customer, client, stakeholder or executive replaces you.
Frequently asked questions
- What does management without measurement mean?
- It is trying to lead a digital business without the information needed to do so. Opaque workflow leaves managers and executives unable to see workload, billing, margins, or which products and teams are profitable, making sound management impossible.
- Who is accountable when poor workflow causes missed deadlines?
- The leader. If your workflow doesn't make everyone aware of campaign responsibilities, deadlines, and deliverables, mistakes will be made and deadlines missed, and that falls on you as the executive.
- What business metrics does disorganized workflow obscure?
- It makes it hard to track monthly or quarterly billing, measure margins and project profitability, and identify which products, markets, partners, clients, or teams are most profitable or productive.
Christina Rice is the Founder & CEO of sO2 Digital (Supplemental Oxygen Digital, LLC). She has spent her career building the people, processes, and technology that make digital advertising perform at scale, and leads the team behind Atlas, sO2's media activation platform. She reviews and updates Summit Thoughts to keep the agency's thinking current.
