Detoxing Your KPIs for Real Results
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are essential for tracking progress toward your goals, whether you’re using EOS Scorecards, OKRs, or any other framework. Their true purpose is to measure the behaviors that drive progress, not just the outcomes themselves. But there’s a common mistake many leaders make—either holding onto KPIs long after they’ve stopped being useful or focusing on “vanity metrics” that don’t actually move the needle toward their objectives.
To get the most out of your KPIs, you need to track what actually drives behavior and be willing to adjust as those behaviors evolve. Here’s what you need to know to make KPIs work effectively for your team, whether you’re managing product roadmaps, overseeing business operations, or guiding teams as an EOS integrator.
Why KPIs Must Focus on Behavior, Not Just Outcomes
Let’s start with the fundamentals. A KPI should measure behaviors that actively drive progress toward a goal—not just the outcome itself. This seems straightforward, but it’s where a lot of teams miss the mark.
Take the example of a personal goal like weight loss. Many people track their weight weekly, assuming that’s the best measure of success. But tracking weight doesn’t give you the full picture of progress. The real drivers of weight loss are behaviors: working out regularly, improving nutrition, and building sustainable habits. A better KPI might be tracking how many days a week you work out or how consistently you stick to your nutrition plan—because those_ are the actions that lead to the desired outcome.
In a business context, it’s the same principle. Let’s say your goal is to increase customer retention. Many teams instinctively track retention rates or churn—outcomes that provide information but don’t tell you what’s driving change. A more effective KPI would be tracking the number of customer touchpoints per month or measuring the response time for resolving customer support tickets. These actions have a direct influence on retention and are far more useful for guiding day-to-day decision-making.
Takeaway: KPIs should always focus on _controllable actions_—the behaviors that influence the final goal, not just the final result.
Evolving KPIs Once Behaviors Become Habits
Here’s where many businesses fall into a trap: once a KPI has done its job of establishing a behavior, they continue to track it long after it stops adding value. This creates stagnation, where teams measure the same metrics quarter after quarter without rethinking whether they’re still impactful.
Let’s revisit the weight loss example. If you’ve been going to the gym three times a week for several months, tracking that behavior no longer pushes you forward. It’s already ingrained. At this point, continuing to monitor gym attendance adds little insight. Instead, the KPI should evolve. You might start tracking time spent in different types of training, like HIIT, Level 2 Cardio, or Endurance Training—types of workouts that target more specific actions for further progress. Or you might introduce a new focus on nutrition with KPIs around macronutrient tracking_ or an intermittent fasting schedule. These new KPIs dig deeper into the behaviors that directly support your ultimate goal of weight loss.
In a business context, this could look like a product management team that has been tracking a basic KPI like number of client calls for months. Once the team is consistently hitting those numbers, that KPI no longer drives new behavior—it’s routine. At this point, you’d want to shift to something deeper, such as tracking the quality of those calls through customer satisfaction scores or Net Promoter Score (NPS). This evolution ensures that the KPI continues to push toward your overarching goal, whether it’s increased retention, product adoption, or operational efficiency.
The key is understanding when a KPI has outlived its purpose. If a behavior is now second nature, that’s your cue to introduce a more sophisticated KPI that aligns with the next stage of growth.
How to Identify When a KPI Needs to Evolve
To help your team know when it’s time to update a KPI, consider building a quarterly review process. This is especially useful for EOS integrators and operations leads working closely with Scorecards, but it can easily apply to product managers working within an OKR framework. Here’s how to evaluate whether a KPI is still relevant:
- Is the behavior we were trying to drive now a routine? If yes, the KPI has likely hit a steady state.
- Is this KPI still pushing us toward our objective? If it’s not driving further improvement, it’s time to evolve.
- Are we seeing diminishing returns? A good indicator is if the KPI consistently looks good but doesn’t seem to impact the larger goal anymore.
Regularly asking these questions helps ensure your KPIs stay dynamic and relevant.
Practical Example: If a team has consistently hit its goal for response times on customer tickets, you may want to evolve the KPI to something that tracks customer outcomes, such as first-contact resolution rate or the percentage of customers who rate their interaction as excellent post-resolution. This keeps the focus on improvement and avoids letting metrics drift into the realm of routine.
Beware of Vanity Metrics
Vanity metrics are one of the most common traps for product and operations teams. These metrics look impressive on a dashboard but don’t actually move the business forward. They often create a false sense of progress without providing insight into what behaviors need to be improved.
For instance, in product management, you might be tempted to track metrics like social media engagement, website traffic, or email open rates. While these are easy to measure and can indicate some level of success, they don’t directly drive business outcomes. More often than not, they distract teams from focusing on what really matters.
If your goal is to increase revenue, tracking these surface-level metrics won’t cut it. Instead, focus on KPIs that measure behaviors directly tied to revenue generation, such as lead conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, or average deal size. These metrics are far more aligned with the business outcome and provide actionable insight.
Vanity metrics tend to be seductive because they look good on reports, but they don’t push your business forward. Always ask: Does this metric tell me what behavior to change or improve? If not, it’s likely a vanity metric, and it’s time to focus on something else.
Don’t Let Maintenance Metrics Dominate
While evolving KPIs is critical, maintenance metrics still play an important role. They can serve as early warning signs if your team begins to revert to bad behaviors or slip on standards. However, these metrics shouldn’t dominate your Scorecard or OKR framework.
For example, in EOS, maintenance metrics might sit on a maintenance dashboard, where they are regularly monitored but don’t take up focus during weekly leadership discussions. If a problem arises, like customer touchpoints dropping, the team can quickly address it. But if the behavior is stable, it’s a signal to shift focus elsewhere. Similarly, in OKR structures, these metrics can live on a dashboard for ongoing monitoring but shouldn’t be used as KPIs driving an objective.
By keeping maintenance metrics separate from core KPIs, you ensure your team is focused on growth and progress, not just maintaining the status quo.
KPIs Should Evolve With Your Goals
Your Scorecard or OKR system should never be static. Just because you set a KPI at the start of the quarter doesn’t mean it should stay fixed for three months if it stops serving its purpose. As your team evolves and behaviors shift, your KPIs should evolve too.
That’s why it’s essential to create flexibility in your performance-tracking framework. Regularly review and refine your KPIs to ensure they align with the behaviors driving your business forward. The most effective KPIs push teams to continuously improve and avoid falling into the trap of “checking boxes” without achieving meaningful results.
When you notice that a KPI is no longer driving behavior or delivering actionable insights, that’s the signal to adjust. Instead of tracking more metrics, focus on tracking the right ones that push your team closer to your objectives.
Final Thoughts: KPIs Are Tools, Not the Goal
Ultimately, KPIs are tools to guide behavior and track progress—they’re not the final destination. Whether you’re using EOS Scorecards, OKRs, or another framework, the goal is the same: identify the actions that truly impact your objectives and focus on those. Once a KPI stops driving meaningful behavior, it’s time to adjust, evolve, or retire it.
The key is to continuously refine your KPIs so they stay aligned with your evolving goals. The best KPIs reflect behaviors that lead to sustained, meaningful progress—so always be ready to adapt and keep moving forward.
