While reading the current edition of Golf Digest magazine there was an article about how Justin Rose set a goal to become the World #1 Golfer and how he achieved that goal. It turns out Rose’s journey towards achieving #1 in Professional Golf started in 2016 when he met with golf statistician Mark Broadie, to reverse engineer his statistics and develop a strategy to get him to World #1. Broadie looked at the numbers and found that Rose could make marginal gains in many areas of his golf game. However, he found that the biggest gain Rose could make was on the greens, specifically on mid-range putts around 7 feet. At the time, Rose ranked 122 in strokes gained putting.
Armed with this knowledge, Rose and his coach Phil Kenyon had Justin adopt a new way of gripping his putter. This change resulted in Justin Rose rising to 21st and 17th in strokes gained putting in the next two PGA Tour season and reaching World Number 1.
This story from Golf Digest magazine is a perfect example of the value of having the right KPI’s or statistics, monitoring them and taking action that result in achieving specific goals.
Let’s unwrap this a little further:
- The PGA Tour uses a system called Shotlink to collect and disseminate scoring and statistical data on every shot by every player in every PGA Tour event in real-time. As with many data collection systems, the result can often be an overwhelming amount of data. Without the “right” analysis and analyst data becomes useless. Are you collecting the right data points in your business? Are they easy to collect? Do the data points support your goals? Is someone, either within your organization or outside of it, assigned to regularly analyze the data and report their findings.
- Is every member of your team committed to learning from and adapting to the necessary adjustments the analysis suggests? I have found many instances where team members within an organization don’t trust the numbers, especially when the data is collected by other teams. Make sure that the data points collected are fully understood as to the reason they are important to the organization, and how they will be used.
- While the analysis by Mark Broadie determined that Justin Rose could make marginal gains in other areas of his golf game, the biggest gain was from the adjustment of his putter grip. That does not mean that Justin ignored the other deficits identified by Shotlink. It is key that you and your team do not fall into the trap of focusing on only one KPI. As I often mention in my presentations, “there is never a silver bullet” solution to goal achievement.
- As your goals evolve, it will be necessary to change some of the data points you collect. Don’t be caught in the “we collect that because we always collected that.”
In your business, collect the numbers, make sure they are the right numbers, and be committed to using those numbers to achieve results. If you would like to dig deeper into this important subject, please use the QR code below to contact me.