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Are we measuring the right things?

20 December, 2019 Reading: 3:18 mins
Sarah Reakes

By Sarah

As leaders and company owners we spend so much time measuring things like gross revenues, margins and operating costs. But are we measuring the right things? We encourage clients to think wider than this, and at KISS I think we need to try harder ourselves sometimes.

Are we measuring the right things?

What should we be measuring?

As a country, economic growth has been long established as the holy grail usually meaning growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We still live an age when we’re glued to the latest economic forecasts, in hopes of a more buoyant market or signs of recovery economically. Simon Kuznets, the distinguished economist who defined the modern GDP for the US government in the 1930s warned ‘the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income’. Indeed, fellow Nobel prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz suggested we should focus more on wellbeing and sustainability as more accurate measures of a nation’s progress. And yet, GDP captures headlines and has a chokehold on our sense of recovery more than ever before.

Bhutan led the way in trying to move away from this in 2008 with a ‘National happiness index’ – recording an upward trend in the happiness of their nation since 2010. The UK has attempted measurements benchmarking and tracking happiness, but countries like New Zealand have gone further, defining ‘improving mental health’ as one of the five top priorities for spending since 2019. It seems to me that the goalposts for society, and any business, need to be more clearly defined in this way and the result should be not just profit growth, but also happiness. Of course, the two are inextricably linked in many ways – as many studies have attempted to quantify at what point does happiness stop increasing in line with wage growth.

What have we learned from years of instability?

As I see it, gross revenue growth in any business is a simplistic measure that may mask a whole range of potential issues and equally leave us blind to some opportunities. Certainly, navigating the economic storm of the last few years has brought this to the fore more than ever. In fact, the ONS paid especial attention to happiness and anxiety levels in the population during the COVID-19 pandemic – data which feels like it’ll be especially useful and humanising for historians in years to come.

Where can we find measures of happiness?

It has got me thinking about happiness, and our processes. As part of working with businesses we don’t just ask about growth target and revenue figures, we’d look at the ‘pain’ their service helps customers with and the ‘jobs’ their ‘product’ does for target audience (result: happiness! Or at least satisfaction…). We often look to understand what could be called ‘happiness indicators’: what are the most effective customer retention strategies? Which customers keep coming back, are happy to recommend you, how do they currently do that, and who might be used as influencers, advocates or case studies?

If we’re working on reputation or internal communications we’d certainly want to understand your recruitment targets, your churn and retention rates and who would recommend you as an employer – I’m sure this is as critical for you as it is for us. Happy, healthy people who are content at work stay there longer and do their best work – a situation in which everyone wins, not just the bottom line. It might be the key to recruiting the next generation too, apparently Gen-Z prioritise work-life balance and personal wellbeing above all else.

So, while numbers are vital, I think I’m learning that happiness may be as important to growing a sustainable business, and there are so many different ways you can begin to quantify it by looking for indicators – you might already have the data you need to begin learning about what happiness means for your business and your clients.


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