The Number that Actually Matters

It’s important to know your number.

“Hold on, there are too many numbers. I need to look up the targets.”

I get it. Our attention is under constant attack, and our bandwidth is limited.

But here’s the problem: if you’re not crystal clear on the one number that matters, the metric that drives everything else, you’ve already lost.

When the target isn’t clear, odds are you’ll miss it. Month after month. Quarter after quarter. Year after year.

This is where organizations stumble. They throw out a dozen metrics, plaster dashboards with data, and hope people somehow achieve them all. But confusion doesn’t drive performance.

If your sales team doesn’t know whether they’re chasing new revenue, logos, or margin, they’ll spin their wheels. Busy? Yes. Successful? No.

This isn’t just sales. Every department faces the same trap:

• Marketing → If they don’t know whether success is measured by leads, engagement, or brand awareness, they’ll flood the world with pretty content that doesn’t move the needle.

• Operations → If the mandate shifts between speed, cost, and quality without clarity, they burn out trying to optimize everything at once.

• Leaders → If you don’t know whether your role is to set direction, drive execution, or protect margins, your team will run in circles.

Confusion creates motion, but rarely momentum. Clarity creates direction. And that turns activity into results.

So the real questions are:

• What’s the number we’re chasing?

• Why does it matter?

• What’s my role in achieving it?

The twist: the number doesn’t stick. The story does.

What sticks is when people understand their role in the story. When they know how their contribution makes the mission possible.

Suddenly, numbers turn into meaning.

People don’t rally around spreadsheets.

They rally around purpose.