The Measure Of Success

For companies large and small, long-term success hinges on collecting the right information and using it to make better management decisions

Many of us associate company performance with profit. After all, business is about making money and a company that isn’t making money won’t stay in business for long. But a company’s financials are just one aspect of performance. The heart of performance is people. The question facing many companies is how to increase measureable performance while maintaining a healthy work environment. Information and understanding are the foundation of a new approach.

Companies are turning, with increasing frequency, to a wide range of metrics to assess how they’re doing. “Historically, companies only used financial metrics as a way of measuring their performance and success,” explains Louise Wilson, the Calgary-based Director of Pricewaterhouse-Coopers’ (PwC) People and Change practice. “But now, we’re seeing that those are what we call ‘lagging indicators’—they just tell you what happened last year. Top performing companies say, ‘How can we use information to drive results earlier?’”