Customer success practitioners talk about how to discover and capitalize on their customer’s most important ROI metrics. That most important metric is measurable, specific, and can be managed. I call that metric the customer’s “currency of ROI.”

The way that a customer success practitioner must learn and deal in their customer’s “currency of ROI”, so to must a manager learn and deal in their team’s “currency of ROI.”

An employee is like a customer. The way they decide to accept a job is similar to the way a consumer decides what business to buy from.

The consumer has goals, dreams, hopes, and ambitions. They have a problem they want solved. They hope the product they purchased helps them solve it. Why should work be different?

Managers would do well to learn the “Currency of ROI” of each of their team. A skilled manager learns how to deal in that currency. They are skilled at helping their team members see how the investment of their team and energy has grown over time.

I believe in this concept so much that I coach the people leader on my team to develop and use this metric with her team. We see results.