As a leader, you hear it all the time. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Key Performance Indicators. Metrics. Reports that are constructed to map to your Annual Operating Plan. Structure. Discipline. Accountability. Deliverables.

You may cringe when you hear these things. You can feel the administrative weight building upon your sore shoulders. Of course you need to do these things well. Isn’t that what being an effective manager is all about? Isn’t that what being a great leader is all about?

No.

Organizations have convinced themselves that extensive measurements and reports that map to their well authored objectives are the key to winning in the marketplace. If they are clear on the outcomes they want, and they can align the metrics against those outcomes, then success will be at hand. Achieving the objectives then becomes a straightforward exercise in hiring the right people, getting them doing the right things, and measuring their performance against established metrics. Managing in this environment is boiled down to keeping score, driving accountability, and changing players as needed.

How inspiring.

You’re not a scoreboard operator. You’re a leader. You’re role is to inspire those around you to win. In order to do that you need players who focus only on the behaviors necessary to win in the marketplace. Service to customers. Knowledge of their products. Ability to empathize with customer needs and match solutions to those needs. Commitment to their teammates and an innate desire to collaborate for team victories.

You don’t win by playing against the scoreboard. You win on the playing field. Not all good works can be measured.

During my career I had the great fortune to work in an environment where people understood this. At Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, I was introduced to an organization that understood that winning wasn’t about accumulating statistics. It was about serving all the people who touched our products. Customers, employees, suppliers, communities. We didn’t have clever, clear, concise business objectives in our AOP’s. We had goals, yes. More importantly, we had a vision and a mission that everyone signed on to. We had a compass heading that pointed to greatness, and everyone believed we could get there. Together.

We had a culture. A way of winning. I liked to call it the culture of the diving catch.

On almost a daily basis, someone somewhere in the company would go above and beyond their assigned duties to save the day for the customer, or a fellow employee, or a member of our communities or supply chain. They would stay late to complete an order, or to finish a production run to meet an important deadline. Drive a coffee machine to a customer late at night to replace a broken one so they could be back in business the next morning. Make a delivery to a customer who ran out of coffee because they had a flood in their business, then stay to help them clean up.

We called it the diving catch. Everyone in the company marveled at these occurrences when we shared them. At company meetings, employees honored their co-workers by telling the story about how that person saved the day. We celebrated the diving catch. It was often emotional and always inspiring.

The funny thing was, as a young leader, I often lamented the culture of the diving catch. I wondered if it meant that we just didn’t have it together enough as a company. Would we ever be in a place where we really knew what we were doing all the time? Where the diving catch wasn’t necessary? I often thought that the diving catch was a problem we needed to solve.

I was wrong.

Think about the words above and beyond.

Going above means you do something that rises above another person’s expectations. Not just his expectations of you, his expectations of anyone. You do something that truly exceeds expectations. I’m not talking about beating your metric by 5%. I’m talking about delivering value above what anyone conceived was possible. I’m talking about wow.

Going beyond means you are not encumbered by the numbers your company is measuring you against. If you are too hard wired to your metrics, then showing up late at night for a customer, when likely nobody except you and the customer will notice, is out of the question. What’s the point if it won’t help your stats? Going beyond means you are willing to cross that line to create a greater good. I’m talking about nobility.

Don’t get me wrong. Metrics are important. Key Performance Indicators are important. There are many things you do need to measure. But they should be indicators of positive behavior. They should not be the exclusive proof of whether your team member is completing their work. If you put too much emphasis on KPI’s, your employee will deliver those results…and nothing else. Your customers will feel like they are your ATM, and you are only there to withdraw their money in exchange for your products. Your stakeholders will feel like their role is to serve your needs without reciprocity. No relationship, no passion, no fun.

Every time we made a diving catch, the person we helped believed in us a little bit more. She knew that no matter what happened, no matter how big a problem there was, we would be there to solve it. With each occurrence, it became our identity. Our culture. Our way. We believed in our ability to overcome anything. When a crisis hit, we went into action. Our stakeholders believed we would always be there when they needed us. When we slipped up and had to ask for their patience, they gave it. They believed in us.

Those things didn’t happen because we had water tight metrics. We did measure our work, but we weren’t perfect at that. Our culture took hold because we had a commitment to each other. We had a commitment to look around, outside our own personal world, to see what was happening and figure out how we could help.

We knew that was how we would win. How we could become great.

Don’t smother your team with metrics. Give them direction, not boundaries. Allow them the freedom to help out when they see someone who needs a helping hand. Don’t penalize them for taking their eye off their KPI’s.

Celebrate the diving catch. Count them, but don’t measure them. You’ll get more of them.

And you’ll win the game.

Lead well.

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