I remember sitting in a small meeting room with a billing team.
We were defining what success looked like for our project. One key element was simple: maintain a low billing error rate.
Then came the roadblock.
"We can't send this communication," one team member said. "It will trigger a 13% error rate when the bills go out 30 days later."
Thirteen percent sounded too high to me. I knew it represented an operational nightmare. It meant days of manual corrections. It meant scaling up a temporary team just to handle the fallout.
To the billing team, that number was a stop sign.
In workplace transitions, we see this pattern often. A metric is thrown around to make the plan seem like it can’t happen. They use the metric as a shield. Then they want to plan expensive workarounds, throw temporary headcount at the issue, or brace for impact. All this makes the change seem more problematic than the status quo.
But often those metrics aren’t grounded in fact or if they are they may not be related to this situation.
Which is why you need to define success at the start and question the data behind people’s fears. Otherwise you end up treating symptoms while the real problem sits untouched beneath the surface.
I always like to look for root causes. So, we analysed the numbers behind the 13%.
It turned out the vast majority of those predicted errors had nothing to do with the new communication or the new process. They were caused by bad data. Incorrect addresses and misspelled names that had quietly accumulated in the database over time.
The solution wasn't to scrap the rollout. It was to clean the list.
It required much less effort than processing the failures and items that couldn't be easily fixed were removed before launch.
When the bills went out, the error rate didn't hit 13%. It fell to 0.03%.
The billing team was skeptical at first, but the data spoke for itself. We sent the communication. There was no crisis, no surge in temp hiring, and no endless overtime.
If you don't define success early, you are operating on guesswork.
When you set clear measures upfront, you uncover hidden operational friction before it turns into a crisis. You shift your culture away from panic and toward a predictable, repeatable routine.
Are you using metrics to define your upcoming change? If you are, do you know if they are based in fact and applicable to the situation?
I have created a free mini course to introduce you to the Know-Learn-Grow Approach.
It gives you a template to start mapping out your measures of success. Access the Free Changing with Confidence mini course below.
If you want to learn more details about how you use measuring success to support building change-ready teams then grab my book, Changing with Confidence or book a call with me to see how I can help.
