You can't "do" revenue. You can't "do" customer satisfaction. You can't "do" complaint reduction.
You can only do specific activities that create those results.
Those activities are your inputs. The results are your outputs.
Most dashboards I see track outputs obsessively. "Revenue this week." "NPS score." "Complaint rate."
Then people sit in rooms asking: "Why is revenue down?" or "How do we improve NPS?"
Wrong question.
You can't fix an output directly. You can only fix the inputs that drive it.
The Core Distinction.
Controllable Input Metrics are metrics where you can directly take action. You can assign someone to do something on Monday and measure whether they did it by Friday.
Output Metrics are the results of your inputs. The lagging indicators that tell you how the business is performing. You report them, you track them, but you don't directly control them.
The link is everything: Every input must connect to a specific output. You must be able to complete this sentence:
"We drive [input metric] to move [output metric]."
If you can't complete that sentence, either the input doesn't belong, or you haven't thought through the causal chain.
The Forcing Questions.
Before you add any metric to your dashboard, it needs to pass a forcing question. If it fails, it doesn't belong in that category.
For Customer Experience Metrics:"Would my customer know this number without us telling them?"
If a customer walked out of your store or finished interacting with your service, would they know this metric from their own experience?
Wait time—yes, the customer stood in line.
Mystery audit scores—no, the customer doesn't know you audit yourself.
For Output Metrics:"Can I control this directly on Monday, or is it a result of other things?"
