The CEO's KPIs are the handful of numbers that tell you whether the three CEO jobs are getting done: is the business heading where you said, is the team in place to get it there, and is there money, today and in two years. Everything else on the dashboard belongs to someone else.
I've coached 300+ CEOs and their leadership teams, and the most common dashboard I see has forty numbers on it. Forty numbers isn't a dashboard. It's a report with colours.
What is the CEO's job, in numbers?
The CEO does three things. Set the direction. Build the team. Make sure there's cash.
So the CEO's own scoreboard has three rows and a handful of numbers.
Direction: the one or two measures that say the strategy is working. For most businesses between $2m and $10m that's a revenue number from the right customers, and one leading number that predicts it.
Team: the seats filled with the right people, and one measure of whether they're performing. A players in A seats is a number, not a feeling.
Cash: cash in the bank today, and the cash position in 90 days at the current run rate.
Which KPIs are somebody else's?
Most of them. Cycle time, utilisation, ticket volume, campaign clicks, on-time delivery. Real numbers, and they matter, and they belong to the person who owns that function.
The mistake I see is the founder carrying all of them. When every number reports to you, every problem reports to you, and you've just built yourself a job as the integration point for the whole company.
Hand the operational numbers to the leadership team. Keep the ones that only you can act on.
How do you pick the leading number?
Here's the test I use on a call. Name the one number that, if it moved 10 per cent this week, would change your revenue in 90 days.
Most founders say revenue. Revenue is a result. It moves last and tells you least.
The number you want sits upstream. Real conversations with your ideal client. Sales-qualified leads, not leads. Conversion. Average value. Delivery capacity. One of those is your constraint right now, only one, and the other three are noise this quarter.
That number goes on the CEO's row.
What does the page look like?
One page. Under ten numbers. Each one with a target set in advance, a red, amber and green threshold, and one name beside it. Looked at every Monday for thirty minutes.
That's the whole of it. It costs thirty minutes a week, and it changes what every other meeting in the business is about. If you haven't set your thresholds yet, start with the KPI traffic light.
The one thing to do this week
Print your current dashboard. Cross out every number that somebody else should own. What's left is your scoreboard, and it's usually shorter than you expected.
If you want to build it with someone who's sat in the chair, book a Strategy Session.
