What is a North Star Metric?

A North Star, much like the actual North Star named Polaris, is your high-in-the sky guide, showing you which direction to head. It’s a long term, steady beacon and is always in the same place, regardless of time. It’s a lofty, nearly unattainable goal meant to inspire you and your organization to contribute considerable time and effort to achieve it.

A North Star Metric is the way a company evaluates it’s progress toward achieving their North Star. If it’s cloudy out and you can’t see the North Star, your North Star Metric is your compass, letting you know you are still headed in the right direction, regardless of how foggy the future looks. This is the one, comprehensive metric which represents your progress toward achieving your North Star, and you can’t just look up to find it.

A North Star Metric is the single metric, there can only be one, that tells a company they are making progress toward their North Star goal. This metric is able to span functions, products, and businesses to bring the entire company together under one measurable goal.

The metric has to measure progress toward achieving your North Star. Be selective. Establishing your North Star and North Star Metric are no small task. They require long term, strategic thinking to establish what your North Star goal should be and how to accurately measure it.

Why do You Need a North Star Metric?

If you aren’t convinced yet why a North Star Metric is important to your business, here are some additional benefits to achieving your business targets.

Alignment
If you have employees then you know it takes work to keep everyone aligned and moving in the same direction. The larger the company, the harder alignment becomes. Think of your North Star and it’s accompanying metric as the leader of a flock of geese. That leader aligns the geese in a V, flying together to achieve their migratory goal to reach south before winter.
Transparency
You North Star Metric is for you to understand your progress toward your North Star, and also for your employees to see the progress as well. They work day work day in and out, supporting your company, and want to know that their efforts are paying off.
Focus
Alignment is the act of setting a group in a single direction. Focus is concentrating that aligned group on achieving a single goal. Have you ever been attacked by bees? I know, not fun, and in the moment you probably didn’t notice how it started with one bee recognizing you as a threat to the hive. That one bee notified the rest of the hive that it needed help to protect the group and the queen. That notification focused all available bees to motivate your retreat from their home. Your North Star Metric is that signal the first bee gives to focus the rest of your company on what must be done to for the company’s survival.

North Star Metric vs One Metric That Matters

There’s another, similar concept called the One Metric That Matters (OMTM). As we’ve established, there is one North Star Metric for an entire company. That metric is long lived, taking years to achieve. The One Metric That Matters is a smaller metric, focusing teams and departments on achieving goals.

These short term goals and metrics change over time, sometimes rapidly as goals are achieved, while the North Star Metric is ever present in the background, guiding those short term goals and OMTMs.

North Star Metric Does Not Equate to Vision and Mission

A North Star Metric is a single, distinct metric used across your entire business to measure overall success. It’s important to keep only one North Star Metric, as you have only one North Star.

You also will have one vision and mission, but vision and mission statements document a company’s purpose, not necessarily how they measure success. If that’s confusing, let’s look at an example to explain it further. Here are Nike’s Vision, Mission, North Star, and North Star Metric.

Vision

“To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”

Mission:

To “do everything possible to expand human potential.”

North Star:

“To create long-term sustainable products.”

North Star Metric:

Nike Considerate Index which evaluates products on material loops, sustainable material use, climate stability, water stewardship, impact to local communities in the supply chain, and athletes acting as change agents. Reference article here.

See how the vision and mission differ from Nike’s North Star. Yes they want to inspire and innovate to expand the human potential, but their North Star guides them to do so in a sustainable way.

A North Star has to be measurable, it’s achievable, it’s a goal. A vision and mission are not goals, they are never ending. If you want to read more about vision and mission statements, here’s my post about how to write them.

A North Star does have an end. In fact, Nike met it’s North Star goal in 2011 and had to move the bar higher than originally planned to continue to drive sustainable business practices.

My North Star and How to Find Yours

Finding your North Star, whether it be personal, for your small business, or for your company, is a multi-step process. If you have never given a North Star Metric a thought, I recommend you start with discovering your values. If you need help, check out my Core Value Discovery Guide, a free tool to help you discover your values which will guide you in all aspects of your life.

As I was working on establishing my core values, I discovered my North Star. Here is my story which will help you on your journey. If you have any questions, leave me a comment below or shoot me a message via my contact page or on my social media. I’d love to connect and help you on your journey.

Values

My values, the words that guide me every day, are:

Dependable
Caring

I know, two slightly odd values for a furniture maker. But they hold true. I want my work to be dependable. want my actions, follow through, communication, and interactions to be dependable. If I say I will do a project and get it done by a certain date, you should rely on me following through on my word.

I also want you to see the care I put into each piece I make. I take the extra time to remove a mistake, redo a part, hand sand each corner to remove sharp edges, fit each piece perfectly, and take the extra effort to make sure my pieces shine. Why? Because I care about my work. I will never send a piece off to a customer I am not satisfied with.

To help you understand your values, I have a Core Values Discovery Guide available for free download as well as other business documents coming out for sale soon to help guide you on your journey to improve your business by using management tools to keep you on course so you too can achieve your dreams.

Vision and Mission

Those two values helped me build my vision and mission for Keaton Beyer Woodworking.

Vision: Inspire others to grow their craft.

Mission: Advance the woodworking craft by build high quality furniture, highlighting craftsmanship, and creating tools to hone enthusiast’s abilities.

North Star

Back to my North Star and the metric I use to monitor success. My North Star is to become a guide, helping small businesses and craftsmen succeed. We see the dominance of large corporations across the globe. These companies do what used to be done by artists and craftsmen faster, cheaper, and at a lower quality in the name of profits. I would like to change that, to shift the paradigm so people can support their local artists and small businesses because if we as a society lose artists, craftsmen, and small businesses, then we lose out on culture, imagination, and creativity.

A lofty goal which will likely take my lifetime and beyond to achieve. But if I can inspire others to carry on my North Star, that’s good enough for me.

North Star Metric

How do I measure it. Right now I measure that through views. I work a full time job and don’t have means to spend time out in the public. I can’t go to craft shows, work with lawmakers to help out the little guys like me. The best way for me to do that is to write, to post, to make videos, to take pictures, and to inspire others enough to click, like, and subscribe. Eventually those eyes will generate income so I can spend more time advancing toward my North Star.

If any of that inspires, excites, or moves you, please sign up for my mailing list. Come back regularly to read my blog posts and check out my Instagram page and YouTube channel. With your help and support, someday I’ll be able to report back that I’ve changed my North Star Metric to measure how many small businesses I’ve helped per month or how many people attended my classes.

What is a North Star Metric?