How do you know when you're winning?
You know why people love setting weight loss or money goals?
They're easy to measure. You can track progress in steps, kilos, or dollars. You know if it’s working.
I’ve been reading a book on designing behavior change, and one line stuck out,
“If you don’t know how your product or campaign is going to be judged, then by definition, it’s not going to succeed.”
People get better results from coaching not because coaching is magic - but because coaching measures things. It puts structure around goals that are often vague:
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“I want to be more confident.”
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“I want to feel better.”
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“I want to be a better communicator.”
We make those things measurable. Even just by tracking energy levels, clarity in conversations, how often you feel calm or prepared.
And suddenly, success feels possible. You get moving where you've been stuck before.
The book outlined something I think every leader, coach, or builder should pin on their wall,
Before starting work on any project, you need,
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A clearly defined, tangible, measurable outcome - and a metric to track it.
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A clearly defined action that drives that outcome - with its own metric.
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A threshold that defines success vs. failure for both.
If you don’t have this - you’ve already lost.
That’s why “what gets measured gets managed.”
Oprah, in one of the interviews, beautifully said (as she often does),
“Successful people get what they want because they KNOW what they want.”
And it dawned on me now, that what she really meant, they know how their goal and success are judged.
They know their success metrics.
Do you? Does your team? Does your company?
It matters in big things and small things. I was hiking up Lion’s Head. I noticed how different the hike feels when I set small checkpoints,
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The first bench.
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The halfway sign.
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That rocky bit just before the top.
Without those mini-markers, I’d just feel tired. With them, I felt progress. I knew how I was doing. Same hike - different experience.
That’s the power of measurement. It creates momentum. It creates success feeling. It creates meaning. And without it, how would you know when you've won?
How do YOU measure success? What’s the threshold for success and failure? In life, at work, in leadership?
It doesn’t have to be money or kgs lost.
It just has to be something that matters.
And something you’re willing to track.