“Nature never hurries, yet everything is accomplished.” Lao Tzu

Revenue is the flower, the real story starts underground.

One of my favourite things in our back garden right now is the bougainvillea.

When we moved house last year, however, it didn’t look well.  The branches were interlocking, there was no light getting through to the inner section and the growth was patchy in certain areas.

Then, in January, storms hit and we had to cut back the longer branches to save it from  uprooting.  The flowers disappeared almost completely and, for a while, the whole thing looked decidedly worse for wear.

On Easter Sunday, sunshine had returned and I set myself the task of bringing the bougainvillea back to life. 

Like many amateur gardeners, my attention immediately went to the obvious problem.

The flowers had disappeared.

So I pruned it, shaped it, spread it out and waited.

And yes, for the next few weeks, every morning over breakfast I’d sit watching it, hoping to see new blooms appearing.

Of course, nothing changed.

Eventually I spoke to someone who actually understood gardening.

His answer was wonderfully simple.

“Stop looking at the flowers.”

The flowers weren’t my problem.

They were simply my desired outcome.

The real story was happening underground.

The roots.

The quality of the soil.

The watering.

The pruning.

The amount of sunlight.

By the time the flowers disappeared, the plant had been telling me for weeks beforehand that something wasn’t right.

I simply wasn’t paying attention to the right signals.

Business works in exactly the same way.

Revenue is the flower.

The real story starts underground.

The Trap Most Founders Fall Into

Almost every management pack starts with the same numbers.

• Revenue
• Profit
• Cash
• Receivables

They’re all important.

However, they’re all your business flowers.

They tell you what your business has already produced.

They don’t necessarily tell you what it’s about to produce.

That’s why business owners can often feel blindsided.

Revenue suddenly drops.

Margins unexpectedly tighten.

Cash becomes uncomfortable.

The truth is, however, that none of those things happened overnight.

The roots of these symptoms had been changing for weeks or months.

And most likely nobody was looking.

Great Founders Don’t Collect Numbers

They ask better questions.

That’s a very different mindset.

Every Monday morning, I don’t believe founders need a bumper twenty-page reporting pack or a 45 minute dashboard walkthrough.

They just really need a handful of questions that will shape the decisions they’ll make that week.

Questions like:

• Can we already see enough revenue coming?
• Is the market accepting what we’re selling?
• Are we protecting the value of our work?
• Can we actually deliver everything we’ve promised?

Notice what these questions have in common.

None of them simply describe the past.

They give you a greater opportunity to influence the future.

That’s the difference between information and leadership.

Decision Metrics

I mentioned last week that one of the best pieces of advice I ever received was: “Learn the difference between an interesting piece of data and a useful one.”

That sentence has stayed with me throughout my career, because not every KPI deserves equal attention.

Some numbers are simply interesting. Others should change your behaviour.

I’ve started calling those Decision Metrics.

A Decision Metric isn’t valuable simply because it’s accurate.

It’s valuable because it changes what you do next.

If a number doesn’t influence a decision…

Then why are you measuring it?

Introducing The Nuvem9

Over the years I’ve found myself returning to the same handful of questions with almost every founder I work with.

Not accounting questions. Leadership questions.

Questions that tell us whether the business is becoming stronger or weaker long before consequence appears in the financials.

Those conversations have gradually evolved into what I’m now calling The Nuvem9.

Nine Decision Metrics.

Nine numbers. Nine questions. Nine opportunities to act before the outcome is decided.

Not designed to impress investors.

Not designed to satisfy accountants.

Designed to help founders make better decisions.

Each one answers a different leadership question.

Together they provide a simple weekly picture of the health of a founder-led business.

Think of them as checking the roots rather than admiring the flowers.

Before We Look At The Nine…

Here’s a challenge.

Open your latest dashboard.

Or your management accounts.

Now ask yourself one question for every number you see. “Would this number change a decision I make this week?”

If the answer is no…then it’s probably an interesting number.

It is not yet a Decision Metric.

The purpose of reporting isn’t to explain last month.

It’s to improve next month.

Final Thoughts

A great gardener won’t spend their weekends polishing flowers.

They care for the roots because they know that’s where healthy growth begins.

Great founders think exactly the same way.

They don’t obsess over outcomes.

They become curious about the systems producing those outcomes.

Every sale began as a conversation.

Every conversation began as an opportunity.

Every opportunity began with a decision.

By the time revenue appears on your dashboard, the work that created it has already happened.

So perhaps the most important question isn’t: “How much revenue did we make?”

It’s:“What are we seeing today that tells us what this business will look like three months from now?”

Because when you get your roots healthy…the flowers usually look after themselves.

Next Week

Next week I’m going to walk through The Nuvem9 in full.

The nine Decision Metrics I believe every business owner should have immediately to hand, and more importantly, the nine leadership questions those metrics are designed to answer.

Businesses don’t grow by measuring more.

They grow by measuring what matters.

 

Side note: my bougainvillea is recovering well, and my wife is starting to get a little jealous of the attention it gets!