Having a team that matters in a company starts with this…

The dream to stand above the others & have a meaningful impact. Photo Credits: Denali National Park and Preserve

Every team has clients, customers or someone they serve to better. Some clients are easier to spot than others because they’re vocal, they drive the roadmap, or they come shouting when something breaks. No matter the case, every team has a client.

If every team has a client, what are the most fundamental metric to measure?

Adoption of your implemented solutions. At this moment you might be tilting your head sideways and saying, ‘Adoption, really?’.

Yes, adoption. Let me give you an example of where a team might think otherwise and the underlying problem.

Assume for a moment that you are the head of the security team at your company. You are responsible for policies, data protection, preventing leaks, etc. You might have gone as far as saying your team’s mission is protecting the company, and mitigating risk. There is just one catch with your mission statement, and that is the lack of your client(s) in the statement.

You might be frustrated at this point thinking, ‘But I have, I run the security team! My client is the company.’ The company isn’t your client, the company is who employs your team, and protecting them is the by-product of working with your clients.

The reality is that your clients are the employees of the company. Your mission is listening to them, finding their pain points and implementing a solution. There’s just one small catch, the solution you implemented, what was the adoption rate across those that had the pain point?

Adoption is everything. As a manager of a security team, you can set the best practices, policies, knowledge, etc. but if nobody is adopting it, using it or everyone is just trying to bypass it, then it is pointless.

Having a team that matters in a company starts with being able to get adoption within the company. To get adoption you need to listen. Listen to your clients.