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My father retired was a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and he spent many years teaching at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. One thing he always taught his students about flying—and me, when I started driving—was "check your six." In military parlance, your "six" is the area immediately behind you. Imagine a giant horizontal clock with you in the middle and 12:00 directly ahead, and you'll visualize the reference.
Pilots have to pay constant attention to their instruments in order to get where they're going in one piece—and in a sense, so do you. Whether you're a team manager or an entrepreneur running your own business, you have a lot in common with a pilot. If you don't pay attention, your business might fail...and it's a long way to the ground. Plus, you can't always see very far ahead, so you'd better keep a close eye on your course.
Your equivalents of piloting instruments may not operate in real-time, so you have more time than a military pilot has to respond. But if you keep an eye on the "Check 6 Measures," as I call them, you can protect your tailfin and stay safe in all kinds of business weather. Here are those all-important metrics:
This is the business equivalent of your altimeter. How fast is your money coming and going? If inflow is less than outflow, a crash could be imminent.
Does your team pull off your projects with speed and efficiency? Turning things in on time and within budget will keep your end users (your managers or customers) happy. Reach your destination at a reasonable price and on time, and you're likely to get more work.
Is your work top-notch? It had better be, or it won't matter how well you stay on schedule and under budget. If your products fall apart in the end user's hands or doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, your team's ratings will suffer. If youroutput continues to stink, you'll eventually crash and burn—and for good reason.
Labor represents the biggest cost in most businesses, so be sure to keep an eye on your hours worked per process. Make sure those hours worked don't offset your profit. Now, if your team members get paid a salary, making them work longer hours can assure you meet your budget...but overwork has its own costs. Productivity will surely plummet if you push your people beyond the ragged edge of overwhelm.
Whether you serve millions or just a handful of C-Suite executives, you need to keep a weather eye on this particular "instrument." It may not always be obvious how well you're doing, so gather the information you need to obtain a clear reading. This may be easy if you're under review by just a few superiors; however, if you're answerable to the general public, you'll have to make an extra effort. Quick surveys can be very effective here. We survey our clients every other year to make sure we’re hitting the mark.
Return on Investment is the gold standard for determining the value of a project—very close to the speedometer reading. It helps tie the rest of your "instruments" together, and makes sure you're moving fast enough to stay in the air. Just like an airplane, you have to invest in project maintenance; it's never a good idea to cut corners just to save a little money. But otherwise, make sure your profits are healthy enough to keep the project going.
The Bottom Line
My Check Six Measures are a simple, logical way to ensure that your project and your team fly high, on a steady path leading toward your organization's ultimate goals. That doesn't mean they're the only way to determine how well you're doing, but I do think they're a good baseline to consider, and they offer an appropriate starting point for your daily metrics. Get them in place, tune them up as you go, and you'll always have a good idea of how you're doing.
To learn more about going back to business basics, visit our website, or download the free e-book.
