What’s your Most Important Number?

Where attention goes, energy flows.

I believe it was Jeff Bezos who said, “tomorrow is a function of what you did 9 months ago”. This is why it is so important to establish what your organization is to focus on and ensure it is well understood by everyone. And now with 2024 planning in late stages, I wanted to share my experience with how powerful it can be in getting closer to your vision to have the whole organization focus on one number.

We all have a lot of things we want to do and accomplish. The CEOs I work with have a lot of goals they are working on. Most have a bunch of small urgent goals and a big long term vision. And, they think the organization is aligned because these goals and vision cascade down to the OKRs our teams create and execute their plans and day to day activities against.

Don’t confuse the work behind the work with the actual work.

The promise of OKRs or any goal/metric system is supposed to help focus the organization and people and hold them accountable for the initiatives that will get you to your destination (vision).

These are useful, but not sufficient.

I would also say that they are not the actual work but the work behind the work. Remember this: Your job is not to craft the perfect OKR, internal doc, or product review deck, it is to deliver value to customers and grow your business.

I’m surprised how many Founders and CEOs I’ve worked with are not as clear or specific as they need to be about where they are headed next.

What’s the most important single goal that will simplify and speed up all your other decisions?

I have found that one of the most powerful ways to improve execution and align your team is to become great at setting a single goal (number) for what needs to be done next on the journey to achieving your overall vision (destination).

It’s often an important internal number and not a revenue goal. The number drives revenue, so you’re driving to that number.

What number do you post on the wall for everyone to see? What are the key numbers that roll up to the big number? What number will make all your tactical decisions easier when you focus on it?

Sometimes this is an urgent quarterly goal, but it’s usually a 12-to-18-month goal for your team. It’s almost never a 2–3-year goal. And, it’s usually a big round number that’s an achievable stretch. 5, 10, 50, 100, 200, 10,000, 1M

What are you driving toward NEXT?

Your bigger long term vision matters, but it really depends on what you are driving toward NEXT in your business that you are working towards as a company.

When I finally got clear about this number, with help from peers, it made everything clear and simple. I still use this practice today as a sole practitioner. I’m already thinking about my big number for the following year. Our next N goals are made up, of course. That’s the fun of creating a company. We get to make things up and then make them come true.

What should I do today or next week? It depends on my number.

What advice should I give about hiring, funding, marketing, sales or product to a founder? It always depends on their Next N. I need to know that first.

• What’s your most important Next number/goal in the next 12 months for your company?
• Is everyone on your team working towards this goal and do they understand why it’s important?

Everyone has lots of goals, especially bigger companies with bigger teams. But the one goal the CEO thinks is most important increases the odds that it will move and get done. It’s the new, hard goal that will take extra focus.

Thanks for reading. I’m John McAuliffe and I help companies accelerate growth more consistently and with greater predictability using repeatable processes.