Becoming a Better Value Creator: How to Improve the Company's Bottom Line--and Your Own

Defining and Measuring Success

Great value creators always have a way to measure their success. They avoid “sunflower management,” a term that describes pleasing the boss rather than keeping track of things that bear directly on creating value. When organizations or individuals define success—whether openly or tacitly, by their behavior—in terms of pleasing superiors, then people measure how well they are doing by all the wrong metrics, and they make their decisions accordingly.

Neither a company nor an individual can focus on value creation unless that is how success is defined and measured. By contrast, once people understand what value creation ...