Promoting the right person to fit a job can be complicated: can they be trusted? Are they experienced enough? Will this position help them grow as an employee?
Without any data to support these questions, an employee’s best bet of promotion depends on how much their boss likes them.
In this LinkedIn Live episode, our panel — including a CMO-turned-CEO, Mark Stouse, Chairman and CEO of ProofAnalytics, discusses the importance of using analytics to measure teams and its overall benefit to organizational growth.
What we discuss:
- How to measure a high-performer
- Why metrics & analytics are the backbone of any organization
- How to think about data
How to measure a high-performer
An employee decides to speak up and ask for a raise; but, when they sit down with their boss, the question is posed to them: What makes you feel you deserve a raise? The employee lists off all the reasons: I’m upbeat, I always get my work done on time, and I’m never late. The boss nods and says those were the same three reasons the last employee felt they deserved a raise.
If the employee brought in data that supports how their work has benefited the company, it would’ve been a different conversation. Without data, it’s a game of, “How much does the boss like me?” Once the data is utilized, however, everything becomes negotiable.
Computing compensation
Whether it’s a promotion or compensating an employee for going above and beyond, the question is this: Is there a generalized way to measure analytics that all companies can use?
“This is all about finding out or creating sort of a triage; it’s a list of factors that are driving a particular outcome.” — Mark Stouse
For Mark, how the data is specifically measured to gauge an employee’s right to compensation can be complex — each position will look at a list of factors to determine the right fit.
Beyond an employee’s promotion or compensation, how else can analytics benefit a company?
Why metrics & analytics are the backbone of any organization
If we boil down why someone deserves a promotion or compensation, it comes down to how they’re helping move the business forward. They’re being rewarded for aiding the company with growth:
”What I care about as a CEO is what, at the end of the day, is your contribution to the business, to the things that the business absolutely has to have in order to move forward?” — Mark Stouse
Measuring those analytics, then, is crucial to the future of any business. If a well connected culture makes internal processes run more smoothly, it’s as important to focus on as sales & marketing.
T-shaped talent in CMOs
A specific strategy of finding employees, like the CMO, that will assist in creating positive culture and pushing growth is described as locating T-shaped talent. Mark tries to find those employees that have multiple verticals attached to their horizontal.
- Vertical part of the T: Deep discipline expertise
- Horizontal part of the T: Cross-discipline expertise
However, an important situation to avoid is an employee who has the vertical, but no horizontal:
”If all you have is a bunch of verticals, and you don’t have this piece up here, you’re just totally siloed.” — Mark Stouse
How to think about data
For many companies in the past, integrating analytics and learning how to fully use analytics was incredibly costly and hard to learn. Paired with little understanding of how beneficial analytics can be to a company’s growth, the technology is still underutilized.
Mark’s call to action: cost is no longer a factor in play; automation has made using analytics much easier. The longer it takes to bring on analytics, the more risk you bring to your company’s future prosperity.
”As a business leader, who happens to specialize in marketing or something else, it all hinges on my ability to operationalize analytics.” — Mark Stouse
Analytics is central to any organization as a way to objectively measure employee performance and organizational processes. Any data left on the table is a waste of your most valuable resource — make sure you’re getting the most out of your business.
This post is based on an episode of the #FlipMyFunnel podcast. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or here.
