Insight from Milewalk

Walk into any COO's office and you'll see the same leadership KPIs plastered across their dashboards: employee satisfaction scores, retention rates, and that dreaded "engagement index."

These metrics are as useful for measuring leadership as judging someone's personality by their Spotify playlist.

Let's be real: Most leadership KPIs measure activity, not impact. We default to measuring what's convenient rather than what's meaningful.

Want proof? Look at the standard metrics below, then ask yourself: How many of these actually capture the difference between a good leader and a great one?

Track: Goal Achievement + qualitative assessment of goal difficulty

Track: Retention of top performers + internal promotion rate

Track: Skill deployment rate (how often are new skills actually used?)

Track: Engagement trends, not absolute numbers

I've learned that effective measurement comes down to three principles:

Here's my advice: Start with 3-4 outcome-focused metrics. Watch how they change over time rather than fixating on absolute numbers. And please, retire those vanity metrics like "number of 1:1s completed."

The most effective operations leaders I work with have embraced this minimalist approach.

They've stopped trying to measure everything and instead focus on what truly matters. The rest is just corporate wallpaper.