Measures, owners and cadence
Every measure in the plan has one owner, a rhythm and a source system, and only twelve of them go to the board.
Thirty-eight numbers is too many
The sample’s five trees yield 38 measures. A fifteen-person company will not collect 38 numbers every week, and a dashboard with everything on it is how dashboards replace management. So the plan sorts them into three tiers.
How to read it. Seven committee measures plus five cash controls make the board’s twelve numbers. The rest run the business or stay in the tree until needed.
Every measure has one owner, a rhythm and a source
A measure is only useful if someone can read it and move it. So each one is tagged with the role that owns it, how often it is read, and the system it comes from: the billing export, the CRM, the ticketing system, the carrier bill.
| Measure | Today → target |
|---|---|
| New-sale add-on attach rate serves Pricing · Sales | about 0.4 paid add-ons per new seat → 0.7 by month 9 |
| Loaded cost per admin employee serves Overhead · Finance | about $74k → flat while revenue grows 20% |
| Contracted call termination rate serves Gross margin · Carrier management | last negotiated 2023 → down 12% by month 6 |
| Disconnects with no reason code serves Retention · Billing | 25% (8 of 32 lost customers) → under 5% by month 3 |
| Out-of-term customers serves Retention · Account management | 32% of customers → 15% by month 12 |
| Active selling partners serves Growth · Channel management | 14 of 20 → 20 of 20 by month 12 |
| Acquired seats serves Growth · Owner | none → one book of 300–600 seats a year from month 12 |
The sample’s seven committee measures. Each is read from a named system; the full report adds the cadence and whether it is controllable or only influenceable.
“Controllable” means management can move it directly. “Influenceable” means it depends partly on customers or partners, like the number of active selling partners. A measure is only assigned to a role that actually moves it.
Green, amber, red
Every measure has a target path from today to its target date, not just an end point. Each period it is compared with that path.
Green: on or ahead of the pathAmber: behind for one periodRed: behind for two periods, or moving the wrong way
Red triggers a corrective-action review at the next meeting. A measure with no system behind it yet is never green: it is “not measured yet”, and setting up the measurement is its first piece of work.
- Glide path. Each planned measure carries a path from base to target over the horizon, at its own cadence, with a stated shape (linear, a step at a dated event, or the path the initiative schedule implies)
- Root status. The objective’s own status is computed from its actual against its composed path, never inferred from its measures
- Leading indicators. Measures are ordered by their lag to the result; every planned outcome has at least one leading indicator, or the plan says it has none
The numbers no tree contains
Driver trees break down what creates value, so none of them contains a cash or loan measure. The plan adds five financial controls beside them, so the business can’t run into a cash problem while every value measure is green.
13-week cash forecast
Not prepared in the sample today. Target: a rolling forecast, updated weekly, with variance under 10%. It is the first thing a lender asks for.
Minimum operating liquidity
One month of payroll-type costs on hand today ($83k). Target: never under one month, two months before any sale process.
Debt-service coverage
11.8× on the equipment note today. Target: above 1.50× at every month-end, the covenant any acquisition debt would carry.
Days payable outstanding
About 32 days. Target: hold between 30 and 45 days, with no stretching into a sale; a buyer reads stretched payables as borrowed cash.
Billing disputes and credits
Not tracked as a line today. Target: credits under 0.5% of billings, reported monthly; disputes lead churn.
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