Optimize, Don’t Obsess: The Art of Metrics That Matter

Let’s talk about the difference between optimization and over-optimization. Sounds harmless, right? But this actually impacts your team’s daily life big time.

Mitch and I are business nerds to the core. We get jazzed about KPIs, P&Ls – you name it. I could spend hours tracking all these little metrics. But I’ve realized that’s not what fuels most of our team. To be real, that’s not even what fuels me. I’m a former athlete, and yeah, I love stats because I see a number, and I just want to beat it. That’s also why I love physical therapy. It’s all about measuring something and then pushing to improve.

But here’s the thing – if you focus on driving the right results, like patient outcomes, NPS scores, and creating a rehab experience that people actually enjoy, the rest tends to fall into place.

Sure, to grow a business, you need some metrics. You’ve got to get a dashboard with all your KPIs and automate the data collection. And yeah, you could automate it fully, but I still think there’s value in a manual check. Moving those metrics by hand forces leadership to actually look at what’s going on, not just watch it roll in. There’s a saying, “What gets tracked gets managed,” but if you never look at it, it just collects digital dust. That’s why we pull it all together automatically but then drop it into a sheet ourselves. Could I set up Zapier to do it? Sure. But that small effort keeps us grounded in the numbers – comparing, contrasting, seeing trends.

If you skip this last step, you’re just collecting stats to create funky, irrelevant metrics. Like, “This athlete’s Monday night pass completion rate is 100% when it’s 67 degrees.” Funny? Yes. Useful? No. When we track KPIs, the goal is to remove judgment calls. Either you hit the mark or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, figure out why. And if you did, replicate it. Simple.

But here’s the trap: when everything’s a stat, there’s a pull to optimize every little thing. And suddenly, you’re crossing the line into over-optimization, which ramps up pressure on your team. You start tweaking for the numbers, not the people, and that creates a whole cascade of issues – ones you can’t measure on a spreadsheet.

So we take a different approach. We push for better stats, but through actions that genuinely improve the clinician’s and patient’s experience. Happy team, happy customers – that’s the formula. That’s what’ll make your business thrive (and trust me, that’s not always guaranteed).

-Zach