What gets measured gets managed.
Peter Drucker
It may surprise you that Walt Disney was rejected 302 times when trying to receive financing for Walt Disney World. You may be a little shocked or even inspired by him pushing through despite that much rejection.
What made an impact on me is that he kept count.
Like Walt Disney, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter was rejected 12 times. It went on to make her the first writer to become a billionaire through writing alone. Stephen King was rejected 30 times. Dr. Seuss was rejected 27 times.
Now don’t get lost in the weeds here. I’m not writing an article on how to be successful by overcoming rejection. No, this article is on the value of measuring the things that drive success. These very successful people counted their attempts at success, not just their successes.
I’m going to show you why this tool is absolutely essential for growing your church and the kingdom of God.
What are driver metrics?
A driver metric is simply measuring something that statistically increases your chances of success. By itself it is not the ultimately desired result but it does move you toward the desired result. It drives success.
If there is only a small chance that a publisher will accept your book, contacting only one publisher is a terrible strategy. What if you set the goal, not only of getting published, but of contacting a thousand publishers? Is that something measurable that would greatly increase the likelihood of success?
How do you apply this to ministry?
I haven’t come across a church that doesn’t measure their weekly attendance, their income, and how many people received Jesus. Today many of them do a good job at measuring their first time visitors also.
I pose this question to you, what else can be measured?
How many people had the gospel preached to them outside of services at the church? If teams go out during the week, how many people are they able to talk with? Not just how many people say yes and show up on Sunday, but how many did they present the gospel to?
If you were to get yourself that number, then work to get it doubled, do you think that increase your chances of success? If success is changing lives for God or for getting more people into the church, then yes, increasing the number of people being spoken to will increase your chances of success!
Here are some other good metrics: How many people were invited to church that week by your congregation? How many people are being reached through social media? Of your city’s population, roughly how many drive past your church building? How many people move into your city every year that have to begin looking for a church to call home?
Maybe you can’t cause more people to drive by your building or move to your city, but finding out these numbers can still show you where there are untapped opportunities.
You have to have the right info to ask the right questions.
Driver metrics provide the information needed to ask the right questions.
With limited resources it’s impossible to pursue every opportunity. That’s why you need to be informed of what is really happening through your ministry.
If you encourage your congregation to invite their friends every week but don’t know that even your very friendly members rarely invite anyone, you won’t know that you aren’t communicating in a way that motivates them.
If you find out that a lot of people are being invited and relatively few are showing up, this could be a good opportunity to train your congregation on being better communicators themselves. You can’t know where the problem lies until you measure what’s happening.
I challenge you to:
Take a few moments to figure out what success looks like to you. It could be money toward your new building, it could be weekly attendance, it could be anything.
Now take a step back and think, what repeatable and measurable actions would drive success?
Be mindful of them when you’re allocating your time, human capital, and monetary resources. Include them when setting your goals.