If You Had Personal KPIs

Looking at ourselves like a company

One thing that anyone who has worked in a company is familiar with is the idea of Key Performance Indicators, aka KPIs.

Companies spend a lot of time thinking about them. Revenue, profitability, growth, market share etc. The exact metrics change depending on the organisation, but the principle remains the same: trying to understand whether the business is doing well.

But what would happen if we applied the same logic to ourselves.

In other words, if you had to build a dashboard for your own professional life, what would actually be on it?

What would you measure?

Some might be obvious like income.

But after that, things become much more interesting. Some metrics could be for instance:

How much you are learning? How motivated you feel?

What is your level of stress? The quality of your relationships at work?

How energised you feel at the end of the week? How recognised do you feel at your work?

And perhaps more importantly, how do you feel on a Sunday evening before going back to work?

What I find interesting is that most people already have a fairly good intuition for many of these indicators if the question is asked, but not necessarily a good understanding and/or overview of should be their "KPIs".

The time dimension and intricacies

What becomes also interesting is that these indicators do not always move together.

A role might score highly on learning while creating significant stress. Another might provide excellent financial security but not good relationships. Someone might be earning less than they did previously while feeling more energised and engaged than they have in years.

Looking at a single indicator tells only a partial story of what is going on.

This is where many career conversations become overly simplified. A role can look attractive through one KPI e.g. income while deteriorating across several others.

Where the analogy starts to break down

KPIs also tell you something about current performance and recent trends. They help answer the question: "How are we doing?"

But what they don't answer is whether the overall direction is the right one.

A company can hit all of its targets while slowly moving away from what it ultimately wants to become. It can deliver strong results quarter after quarter while making strategic decisions that only reveal their consequences years later.

And I think something similar can happen in our own lives.

You can have strong indicators on paper e.g. good salary, positive feedback and even a promotion. And yet, still find yourself wondering whether you actually want more of the same.

Performance versus direction

Some of the best decisions can initially make the indicators look worse.

Going back to study, changing career, reducing your working hours, starting a business.

In those situations, some of the metrics may deteriorate for a period of time, but that doesn't necessarily mean the decision was wrong. It may simply reflect the trade-off associated with pursuing a direction that feels more meaningful in the long run, which was the case for me.

Which is why I increasingly feel that there are two different questions worth asking.

The first is: How am I doing currently?

The second is: Am I going in the right direction?

KPIs can be very helpful for the first question. The second one requires a different type of reflection.

The real challenge is not just improving your metrics, but making sure they are serving a life you actually want to build.

Thank you for reading, and as always I would genuinely be curious to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to reach out.

Gauthier