It’s great to see a trendline. A rising tide shows progress in the right direction. Steady consistency shows, well, steady consistency. Stagnation in the form of a growing gap between reality and the target is a bitter pill, but instructive to know all the same1After all, it’s important to stay powerfully related to reality, even if that reality is un-rosy. It’s what makes the need for course correction evident..
So yes, a trendline of where things are and where they’ve been is a handy thing. You know what makes it even better? The story behind the numbers.
And I’m not talking about some flowery summary, written with hindsight and describing the data in aggregate, perhaps spanning a month or three. That’s just describing the trend, and maybe with a few notes of what happened along the way. But a hindsight summary story is too late and too vague to be valuable.
When I say the story behind the numbers, I mean a little story about each number. And “story” is too lavish a title; a story is too much to expect from a solitary little number; it implies too much creative license, and who wants that kind of creative pressure? No, all I’m talking about really is a comment: a dry observation which offers some context that might explain the value of that single measurement in time. Context that will often be quite easy to forget weeks or even days later.
Let me illustrate. Say you’re measuring something weekly.
One week is a really good week for that measure. Was it downstream of some new approach you just tried? Did you get really good sleep that week? Got to work with some fortuitous outlier?
Another week lagged significantly behind. Did something stressful happen that affected your performance? Feeling drained and down about the whole thing? Attended a bachelor party in Vegas for three of those days?
Another consistent week on the right track. Is something clicking for you; something that felt hard is now feeling easy? Feeling a strong momentum? Working hard to keep it up, or cruising along in a flowing steady state?
Maybe you’re having another week of consistent non-progress. Losing faith? Something missing? You know what it is, or perhaps you have no idea what you’re doing wrong? Maybe you’re starting to feel you’re playing the wrong game.
The idea is that: win, lose or indifferent, every time your client reports on a meaningful measure, they, in that moment, probably don’t need to look hard to surface one or two bits of explanation about that measure.
When the data points of our important measures are adorned with comments, you, as our coach, now have a handle on why things went the way they went. As our neutral yet attentive observer, you can surface things you notice about what tends to work and what tends to undermine (if we haven’t noticed it ourselves, thanks to you suggesting the practice!). That recognition allows us to play the game better going forward. It make us more able to steer clear of what derails us, and double down on what works.
So you can tell us: don’t just report the number, take a beat to comment on what might’ve led to that number. And let us know that we’ll both benefit from having a little of that story behind the numbers. Because we will.
Notes:
- 1After all, it’s important to stay powerfully related to reality, even if that reality is un-rosy. It’s what makes the need for course correction evident.
