Every leader I know has, at some point, panicked over a number that hadn’t moved yet — and been right to worry, or wrong to worry, and had no way to tell the difference.
That’s not a patience problem.
That’s a measurement problem.
You’re staring at the wrong dial.
Hi, I’m Jeff Payne. You’re listening to The Jeff Payne Show, Episode #48: The Wrong Dial.
Here’s the situation. You commit to a plan where the real payoff is months out. A marketing investment. A hiring build. A new product. A culture change you’re trying to push through a whole organization.
There’s a gap between the work and the result. That gap is normal — it’s not a flaw in the plan; it’s just how cause and effect work when the effect is big enough to matter.
But during that gap, the person funding the plan — sometimes that’s you, sometimes it’s your board, your partner, your client — needs something to look at. And almost every time, they reach for the easiest number to see. Which is usually the final result itself. Revenue. Signed deals. Traffic. The scoreboard.
Here’s the problem. That number is the last thing to move. Not the first.
There are two kinds of numbers in any plan. A lagging indicator tells you what already happened. A leading indicator tells you whether what’s happening now will produce that result later.
We actually talked about a version of this on the show before — episode thirty-four, if you want to go back — in the specific context of AI search traffic. The point there was that clicks are the wrong scoreboard because they’re a lagging signal, and the fix was to watch earlier signals instead.
Turns out that’s not really a search-marketing rule. It’s a leadership rule that happens to show up in search marketing.
Anywhere effort and result are separated by a lag — hiring, product development, a culture initiative, a sales process overhaul — the same trap is sitting there waiting for you.
And it cuts two ways. If the person funding the plan is watching the lagging number, and it hasn’t moved yet, they conclude nothing is happening. They panic. They second-guess. They pull resources right when the plan might be exactly on pace.
Or the opposite happens. Something is quietly failing, and the lagging number won’t reveal it for months — so it burns budget and goodwill before anyone notices there’s a problem at all.
Either way, the team executing the plan and the person judging it are looking at two different clocks.
This isn’t a new idea, even if it feels new every time you’re the one living through the gap. Decades ago, management researchers developed what’s called the balanced scorecard specifically to solve this problem—the idea that a company’s financial results are lagging indicators, and if that’s the only thing on the dashboard, you’re always finding out about a problem after it’s too late to fix it cheaply.
The fix wasn’t to ignore the financial number. It was to sit leading operational measures next to it — the things that move first and predict where the lagging number is headed.
That’s the whole move. Not abandoning the scoreboard. Putting a second dial next to it — one that tells you today whether tomorrow’s number is going to be good news or bad news.
So here’s where I land this. Not a dashboard template. Three questions.
First: What’s the lagging number everyone’s eventually going to judge this plan by? Name it specifically. Revenue, traffic, retention—whatever it is.
Second: What are the two or three leading indicators that predict it — the things that move first, weeks or months before the lagging number does?
Third — and this is the one people skip — which one are you actually reporting on right now? Not which one you know matters. Which one is on the page in front of you, or your board, or your client, this week?
If the answer to three isn’t the answer to two, you don’t have a measurement problem yet. You have one coming.
A dashboard has more than one dial. Most people only ever learn to read one — the big one in the middle, the one that shows the result.
But the result is the last thing to move. Not the first.
If you want to know whether a plan is working before it’s too late to matter, stop watching the dial that tells you what already happened. Watch the ones that tell you what’s about to.
THE NUMBER THAT HASN’T MOVED YET
Here’s the situation. You commit to a plan where the real payoff is months out. A marketing investment. A hiring build. A new product. A culture change you’re trying to push through a whole organization. There’s a gap between the work and the result. That gap is normal — it’s not a flaw in the plan; it’s just how cause and effect work when the effect is big enough to matter.
But during that gap, the person funding the plan — sometimes that’s you, sometimes it’s your board, your partner, your client — needs something to look at. And almost every time, they reach for the easiest number to see. Which is usually the final result itself. Revenue. Signed deals. Traffic. The scoreboard. Here’s the problem. That number is the last thing to move. Not the first.
The number you’re watching is usually the last thing to move. Not the first.
TWO KINDS OF NUMBERS
There are two kinds of numbers in any plan. A lagging indicator tells you what already happened. A leading indicator tells you whether what’s happening right now is going to produce that result later.
We actually talked about a version of this on the show before — in episode #34, The Click Isn’t Coming Back, if you want to go back — in the specific context of AI search traffic. The point there was that clicks are the wrong scoreboard, because a click is a lagging signal, and the fix was watching earlier signals instead. Turns out that’s not really a search-marketing rule. It’s a leadership rule that happens to show up in search marketing.
Anywhere effort and result are separated by a lag — hiring, product development, a culture initiative, a sales process overhaul — the same trap is sitting there waiting for you.
And it cuts two ways. If the person funding the plan is watching the lagging number, and it hasn’t moved yet, they conclude nothing is happening. They panic. They second-guess. They pull resources right when the plan might be exactly on pace.
Or the opposite happens. Something is quietly failing, and the lagging number won’t reveal it for months — so it burns budget and goodwill before anyone notices there’s a problem at all. Either way, the team executing the plan and the person judging it are looking at two different clocks.
Anywhere effort and result are separated by a lag, the same trap is sitting there waiting for you
A DECADES-OLD FIX
This isn’t a new idea, even if it feels new every time you’re the one living through the gap. Decades ago, management researchers built what’s called the balanced scorecard specifically to solve this problem — the idea that a company’s financial results are lagging indicators, and if that’s the only thing on the dashboard, you’re always finding out about a problem after it’s too late to fix cheaply.
The fix wasn’t to ignore the financial number. It was to sit leading operational measures next to it — the things that move first and predict where the lagging number is headed. That’s the whole move. Not abandoning the scoreboard. Putting a second dial next to it — one that tells you today whether tomorrow’s number is going to be good news or bad news.
If the answer to what you’re reporting isn’t the answer to what actually predicts the outcome, you don’t have a measurement problem yet. You have one coming.
THREE QUESTIONS FOR ANY PLAN
So here’s where I land this. Not a dashboard template.
Three questions:
First: What’s the lagging number everyone’s eventually going to judge this plan by? Name it specifically. Revenue, traffic, retention, whatever it is.
Second: what are the two or three leading indicators that predict it — the things that move first, weeks or months before the lagging number does?
Third: — and this is the one people skip — Which one are you actually reporting on right now? Not which one you know matters. Which one is on the page in front of you, or your board, or your client, this week? If the answer to three isn’t the answer to two, you don’t have a measurement problem yet. You have one coming.
A dashboard has more than one dial on it. Most people only ever learn to read the big one in the middle.
READ THE OTHER DIALS
A dashboard has more than one dial on it. Most people only ever learn to read one — the big one in the middle, the one that shows the result. But the result is the last thing to move. Not the first.
If you want to know whether a plan is working before it’s too late to matter, stop watching the dial that tells you what already happened. Watch the ones that tell you what’s about to.
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