Crises have a way of focusing organizations leaders' attention on a single critical indicator of the business' health. If they are smart, they help everyone on the payroll understand what the key number is, so that people can pitch in and help. If your business has tanked because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the one number you're probably watching most closely right now is revenue. If business has skyrocketed, you'll have some other metric you are tracking every day--maybe inventory levels or the number of qualified job applicants.

There's a lesson here for normal times--and for the many businesses right now that are slogging through the pandemic without either famine or feast. Almost every company can use a key number: a simple, easily trackable metric that ties directly to the business's financial results. Companies can put that number up on a big scoreboard. They can get everyone involved in tracking it, forecasting it, and figuring out how to move it in the right direction.

As we argued in a previous post, a highly visible key number tells everyone in the organization whether they're winning or losing right now. It helps frontline employees understand the business. It gets them thinking more like partners than like hired hands. If you tie a bonus to agreed-on improvements in the number, so much the better. Suddenly everyone's on the same team.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Inc.