You set one goal for the year. The team agrees it’s the priority. Twelve months later, you look back and find a long list of things got done, but the one that mattered barely moved.
Why Your Annual Priority Keeps Getting Buried
It’s everything else that feels important at the time. Each new project slips in looking like a sensible use of energy, and by the end of the year the main goal gets buried under work that all seemed urgent in the moment.
The fix is specific: make one KPI the only thing reported in all-company meetings, and hold that line when people say they cannot contribute. If the main thing is already known, why does it keep losing? That’s the first thing to sort out.
Why Knowing the Main Thing Isn’t Enough
Most founders already know the main thing. At the start of January, it’s often leads. More leads is what the business needs to grow, and everyone agrees on it.
Then new product ideas arrive. A website redesign that has been on the back burner for 17 years suddenly feels urgent. Somebody’s whole job is to publish a blog post every week, and that gets loaded into the same list. Inevitably, the one goal becomes one more item in a web of competing priorities.
I kept coming back to a story Noah Kagan repeats about his early days at Facebook. In the early days, everyone had product ideas to pitch. Mark Zuckerberg had one goal: get Facebook to a billion users. So when an idea landed on his desk, he asked whether it helped Facebook get to a billion users. If it didn’t, it was shelved.
I used to tell myself Zuckerberg could focus like that because Facebook was already Facebook. The more I thought about it, the more wrong that felt. He had just as many expectations pressing on him, if not more. The missing piece in my business was discipline. Or guts.
Not every important project deserves equal airtime. Knowing that’s the easy part. Applying it to a real team is where it gets uncomfortable.
How One KPI Meetings Replaced Lost SEO Leads
A few years ago, StoryLearning hit a rough patch. A large share of leads came from SEO, and Google’s algorithm changes had been cutting that traffic sharply. The plan was to replace those leads with leads from YouTube. If that didn’t work, the business was in serious trouble.
I told my team that all-company meetings would now report on one number only: leads. Everyone’s individual work was still fine. Departmental meetings could cover the rest, and so could side conversations. But when the whole company got together, there was one topic, and everyone had to show what they were doing to contribute to lead generation.
The effect was more creative than I expected.
- YouTube team: planned upcoming videos around lead generation.
- Marketing: optimised landing pages so YouTube traffic converted at a higher rate.
- Product and customer support: turned customer conversations into lead magnets.
- Blog team: built content upgrades from existing content buckets.
- Me: brought back lead generation ideas from conversations with other founders.
None of this was instant. People had to sit with the new focus and find their own way into it. Once they did, it turned into one of those situations where 1 + 1 = 3. The business replaced all of the lost SEO leads from YouTube, and then a bit more. Lead generation eventually hit all-time highs.
That came from a meeting and reporting rhythm built around one number, with every function working under the same focus.
What to Do When Someone Says ‘I Can’t Contribute to That’
You raise a single KPI, and half the team pushes back: I don’t know how I can contribute to that.
I hear the same objection constantly from the founders I mentor. The worry is real. If you stand in a meeting and drone on about lead generation every week, people who can’t see a role for themselves will sit there and quietly check out.
The answer is to trust what focus does to people.
For years, I didn’t have the guts to be this stringent. I assumed that because everyone contributes in different ways, one metric would always leave someone out. Then I saw what happened when the team had no choice but to find a way in. People started working together in ways that hadn’t happened before. I’m fully converted.
Hold the line on the KPI. Give people time to find their own contribution. Sustained focus does the rest.
The Leader’s Job: Be the Taskmaster
This takes nerve.
The system itself is simple. Meetings focus on one thing. Reporting focuses on one thing. The hard part is what you have to become to make that stick. You’ve got to be the taskmaster. You don’t let up. You keep the focus ruthlessly on that one KPI, every meeting, until the team believes you are serious.
Once they believe you will maintain the focus, the culture shifts. People start looking for how their work can serve the KPI.
If you can’t hold that line, the old clutter will come back. The system works only as long as you sustain it.
Run Your Next Team Meeting on One Number
Take the goal you already know is the main thing. Make it the only thing reported at the next all-company meeting. Everything else can stay in departmental meetings.
Expect pushback. Give people time to find their way in. At StoryLearning, the result came from the accumulated weight of a team that finally knew where to point.
Goals get missed for all sorts of reasons. One of the quietest is that the main goal disappears under a pile of reasonable-looking work. Refusing to let that happen is the job.
