Week 3: Instrument your goals to keep you focused on what matters

Time: 1 hour
Tools: Google Docs or Excel
Cost: $0
Your mission:

1. Grab a copy of the LeanFounder dashboard.
2. Update your dashboard with the services and metrics that you think that you should measure.
3. Compare your dashboard to your annual objectives (week 2) to ensure: that you are measuring every objective; and you are not measuring much else.
4. Schedule a recurring weekly 30 minute meeting to view your dashboard, and include a link to your dashboard document in your meeting.
5. Avoid the temptation to review analytics data beyond your weekly review.

Discussion:

Startups run on data, so getting a data-driven foundation at the beginning is important. You need to set up objective criteria to help you determine when you are making progress, what activities help you make progress, and when you need to adjust. At the same time, with all of the analytics that are available, it is possible to spend your entire day analyzing. By setting up a recurring time to focus on your analytics, you ensure that you start building your analytics muscle without over-analyzing trivially small numbers.

Let’s look at a specific example: Google Analytics. This service is a treasure trove of information. It is possible to see what city is sending you traffic, what content your visitors are reading, and what search terms they are using to find you. This data is killer…eventually. When you are just starting, your data probably lacks statistical significance, so diving into the details is useful only in its entertainment value. It is not that there is no value in deeply analyzing small amounts of data, it is just that your time will be better spent doing other externally focused activities.

So quickly review the dashboard, develop a hypothesis about how to improve your numbers for next week, and make it happen.