Warning Lights: The Metrics Christian Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore

If your revenue looks strong but something still feels “off,” you might be tracking the wrong metrics. We unpack a simple leadership tool that can change how you lead: a leadership dashboard. Just like the dashboard in your car, it doesn’t drive the vehicle, but it tells you what’s happening under the hood before you end up broken down on the side of the road. When we lead by instinct or emotion alone, we tend to notice problems only after they become expensive.

We walk through the difference between lagging indicators (results that already happened like revenue, profit, churn, and growth rate) and leading indicators (early signals that predict what’s coming next). We get practical with a financial dashboard that goes beyond vanity numbers, including revenue trends, margins, cash flow, accounts receivable aging, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value. If you care about sustainable business growth, these are the business metrics and KPIs that help you face reality early and act intentionally.

Then we go deeper into what most business podcasts skip: relational and spiritual dashboards. We talk about measuring trust through retention, repeat business, referrals, employee turnover, employee engagement, and conflict resolution time. We also name spiritual warning lights Christian leaders can’t afford to ignore, like loss of peace, compromised integrity, pride, isolation, and rationalized shortcuts. Finally, we balance data-driven leadership with godly discernment so the numbers inform us without becoming our master.

If you’re ready to lead faithfully, measure wisely, and build something that lasts, subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Community Request

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Christian Business Concepts with your host, Harold Milby. Christian Business Concepts is dedicated to guiding companies and business owners in becoming effective, efficient, and successful through God's word and godly principles. Here's your host, Harold Milby.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Thanks, Kelly, and welcome back, everyone, to this week's Christian Business Concepts Podcast, where we integrate timeless biblical truth with strategic business leadership. You know, and I'm your host, Harold Milby, and I'm so excited that you're with us today. This podcast was developed to encourage, enlighten, and empower Christian leaders and business owners through the application of godly biblical principles to very important and powerful leadership concepts. And the end result that we're looking for, uh, the end result that we're working hard for is to help you find not just success, but true godly success. Now, I'm going to ask a big favor from you, and that is to please help us grow the CBC community by sharing this podcast with four or five other leaders that you think it would encourage. And also, please post a link to the podcast on your LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Those are two big things that can really help us. Thanks to all of those of you who do that for us. We appreciate it. And we just want to encourage all of you to help us grow the CBC community. Now it's shout-out time, and this week I want to give a big shout out to Powell, Ohio, right here in the United States, for having so many downloads last week. Thank you. We appreciate those of you in Powell Oh, how uh uh Powell, Ohio, and we want to thank everyone who listens each week to this podcast. And to those of you that are really our first-time listeners, we appreciate you as

Book And Workbook Announcement

SPEAKER_00 1:56

well. Now, before we jump into today's topic, I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who've been purchasing my book that was just published. It's uh Good Boss, Bad Boss. Uh you can find it on Amazon and other platforms and stores. I'm just I'm happy to announce that I've I've written um something that a few of you have asked for, and that is a companion workbook that kind of goes along with the book. Uh and and so the the workbook helps you to have transformation in your life. So the good boss, bad boss book gives you all the information, but the workbook helps you to implement the information that you learn in the book. So I just want to encourage you uh to utilize Good Boss, Bad Boss, and the company workbook. And I encourage you to get them. And again, both of them are on Amazon and other platforms and stores. Uh so there you go. Thank you so much for for being a part of that. And I hope that the that the book really is an encouragement to you. Now, let's jump into today's topic.

Why Leaders Track The Wrong Metrics

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Uh the title of the podcast today is From Doer to Leader: Designing Your Leadership Dashboard. And this may be a foreign terminology to you, but we're going to get into it. Um I think this could be probably one of the most practical episodes I've ever recorded. But here's the truth. Most leaders don't fail because they lack passion. They fail because they monitor the wrong things. They monitor the wrong metrics. You know, they're kind of like looking at the speedometer while while the engine light, while the engine light um is uh uh is flashing. Uh, you know, they they are they are just flat out measuring the wrong things. They they they fail because they're not they they're not looking at the right metrics. So they're looking at the speedometer while the engine light's blinking, as I said. They're watching, they're watching revenue, but the culture of the organization is falling apart. You know, they're celebrating all the new sales, but the trust from their customers uh is declining. You know, so eventually what you ignore becomes something you can't control. So today we're gonna talk about, first of all, what a leadership dashboard actually is. Why does it matter? We're gonna talk about the differences between leading indicators and lag indicators. We're gonna talk about a spiritual dashboard as well and the relational dashboard. And we're gonna talk about data versus discernment. And we're gonna talk talk, lastly, we're gonna talk about how to design a dashboard that honors God and still sustains growth for your business or organization.

What A Leadership Dashboard Really Is

SPEAKER_00 4:48

So let's let's just begin with something simple. What is a dashboard? Well, a dashboard is just a visual system that shows you important indicators, I mean, you know, really critical indicators that are needed to operate your business or organization effectively. You know, your car has one. You think about it. Your car, again, has a dashboard. It tells you your speed. It tells you when you're running out of gas. It it will tell you the temperature of the motor. It'll give you the oil pressure, or at least give you a warning light if your oral pressure drops. So it has all these warning lights. Now I want you to imagine, if you will, you're driving across the country. Maybe you're going from uh Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, California. So you're driving across the country, but your automobile, your car, your truck, it doesn't have a dashboard. So you're not going to know how fast you're going. You're not going to know if your car is overheating. You're not going to know if you're running out of gas. Um, you don't know if there's something really critical that's beginning to fail. Uh so you may feel really good about your trip, and you will until you break down on the side of the road where and there's nothing around for 100 miles. So many leaders operate their companies like that. You know, they they run on instinct or they operate off of emotion. Um, they wait for a crisis to pop up to reveal the things that they should have been looking at that could have warned them maybe months earlier. So a dashboard itself does not drive the vehicle, but it tells you how the vehicle is doing. So it doesn't grow your business, but it tells you how your business is doing. So you can't manage what you refuse to measure. You know, Peter Drucker said one time, he said, what gets measured gets managed. I used to tell people uh on my team, you know, what gets measured gets done. So if I if I want to make sure that employees are doing something, I have to make sure I measure it. And they know I'm measuring it. Uh so let me add this. You know, I think what gets measured improperly gets mismanaged. So we can reverse that. What gets mis uh what what gets measured incorrectly gets mismanaged. Because not all metrics matter equally. And so the purpose of a leadership dashboard um is to bring clarity. You know, clarity will produce confidence. You know, when when I do coaching, especially if it's career coaching, because I'm a certified career coach, um, when I do certified career coaching, the one of the first things we do is to develop clarity so that that client knows what it is that he should be doing or what he desires to do, what his per what he feels like his purpose is, what's his passion. We got to get him to where we or her to where they know where they want to work, what they want to do, what the position is, what the role is, and what kind of culture they want to work in. They've got to have a clarity, but clarity produces confidence. You know, Proverbs 27, 23 says, be diligent to know the state of your flocks. See, in biblical times, wealth was measured in livestock. And so you you had to know: are they healthy? Are they reproducing? Um, are they wandering around? Are they under some kind of a threat, maybe of an animal or somebody from the outside? Uh, and you couldn't guess. You had to examine your flocks. And so a dashboard gives you a lot of visibility before there would ever be a crisis. You can see it coming. It reveals a pattern. Uh, it forces you to be very objective. Um, and it and it's one of the greatest tools you can have to reduce any kind of emotional leadership. Um, you know, so uh it's important to understand that. It's important to understand that because really emotion causes you to react. But when you have a dashboard, it begins to reveal things. You see things way ahead of time.

Leading Vs Lagging Indicators

SPEAKER_00 9:22

So let's let's talk about leader or leading indicators versus lag indicators, okay? And this is where a lot of leaders get confused with what they should be measuring. So I want to kind of define the terms here a little bit. So lag indicators measure results that have already happened. Let me give you some examples. Like revenue. Uh revenue is something that's already happened. Profit, that's something that's already happened. Your your net income, it's already happened. What about your your customer turn rate? How many how often do you lose a customer that's already happened? Uh your annual growth rate, that's something that's already happened, right? So the lag indicators tell you what's happened. They don't tell you what will happen or what possibly could happen. You know, and if you only look at lag indicators, it's like looking in the rear view mirror of your car, but you're driving forward. You know, looking in the rear view is really helpful, but it's very insufficient if you're driving forward. And so leading, you know, lag indicators will tell you what's already happened. Now, leading indicators predict um future outcomes. That's kind of what they what the leading indicators do. Um, it's kind of like your sales pipeline. That's that's potential. That's what could happen. Uh, or your customer satisfaction scores. If you if you do surveys with your customers from time to time, it'll tell you the the trust level that you have with your customers. The lower the trust level, the bigger the trouble that you could be in. Um it'll also you you you can you can gauge and do surveys and find out about your employee engagement. Uh what about follow-up times? What's your response times? Um what's your what's your conversion ratios? Um what about referral rates? You know, are you do you have a referral program? What are your referral percentages? Uh how many hours does it take to train up an employee? Um you know, they're they're just these leading indicators are like just really early warning systems, you know. They're just like uh just very early warning systems. Now, you know, I grew up working on a farm a lot of times in the summer. And if you can imagine a farmer, the lag indicator is the harvest yield. That's the end of the season, and they go out and they harvest the crop. But the leading indicators are what is the soil quality? What's the expected rainfall for the season? What's the seed quality? What about irrigation, fertilization, weed control? So if you only check the yield of your harvest, you're going to be too late to fix anything. So if you have a very weak yield in your harvest, it's too late to fix that problem. You know, Galatians 6.7 reminds us that a man reaps what he sows. So harvest is the lag, but sowing is the leading, it's the leading indicator. So if you control the sowing, you influence the harvest. You know, Jack Welch said one time, face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. Leading indicators force you to face reality, but it causes you to face it early so that you can control the harvest or the outcome.

Building A Financial Dashboard

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So the first thing that you need to do is you need to have a financial dashboard. Now, most leaders know this, they understand it. Now, some will will look at the wrong financial metrics, but most business owners and uh I think they they do a pretty good job on the financial dashboard. But at a minimum, a Christian business leader should be monitoring, say, for example, revenue trends. What's your revenue trends? You need to look at it monthly, you need to look at it over a 12-month period, uh, a trade like a trailing 12 months. Um, you know, you you need to know what that is because you could find out in your business that you always have, let's say, January and February are really slow months. And if you know that, there's a lot of things you can do to prepare. And maybe that's where you do your RD if you're that kind of a company, or maybe that's where you you try to work on new products, uh, whatever. But but it'll reveal revenue trends. You need to know what those revenue trends are. Gross margins. You need to know what your gross margins are, what are your net margins? What about cash flow? You know, we always hear cash is king, and it really is important. So you need to have a metric for that. Uh your your accounts receivable aging, how long is it taking for people to pay you? That's important, you know, because it's not your money until it's in your bank. So you got to make sure that you know what your receivables look like? How much how are they aging? How are they, how they, uh, how is that affecting your business? Um, what is the cost of you to get a customer? What is your cost? What's your acquisition cost for each customer? You know, some companies are spending a couple hundred dollars to get a customer, others are paying $3 to get a customer. It's all dependent upon your business and what you're trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish and what what you're selling or what your product is. Um, but you need to know what is that cost that's associated with getting a customer. And then you need to look at what's the what's a customer, once I have a customer, what is their average lifetime value? In other words, how much will a customer spend with your organization in a lifetime? In the normal lifetime. And let's say the normal lifespan of a customer for your organization is 19 and a half years, we'll say. Well, what is that value over 19 and a half years time? You need to know what that is. Now here's a danger. Revenue can grow, but your profitability can get smaller. Because growth without margin is like it's it's like trying to build a colony on the moon with no oxygen. You know, it just doesn't work. You know, it just it it just doesn't work. You know, revenue, you know, a lot of business owners measure revenue because they they do good with that and they just feel good and they get proud with it. And but realize revenue is vanity, but margin is sanity, and cash is reality. Ooh, I kind of like that. That sounds good. But uh, you know, you you've got to make sure uh that you have a financial dashboard. You know, Proverbs 21.5 says the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance. So planning requires some financial visibility. So, you know, without any kind of

Relational Metrics That Protect Trust

SPEAKER_00 16:25

metrics there, you're you're just gonna be leading blindly. The next is the relational dashboard. Now we get a little bit deeper. See, most leaders measure money, uh, but they don't measure relationships. But loyalty and trust and your culture determine how long your company's gonna be around. It's gonna determine your sustainability. So relational metrics need to include things like what's your customer retention rate? What is what is it? Do they do they last five years, six years, 20 years? What's what's the percentage? What's your retention rate? Um you you need to know what what is the repeat purchase percentage, how many customers are buying over and over again, and and what does that look like? What is the percentage? Um What is your average customer or client's lifespan with you? Um what about the volume of your referrals if you do referrals? Um and a big one should be you should be calculating and looking at your employee turnover rate. That tells you a whole lot. Um your employee engagement, same way. You know, you can use surveys to get those results. Um how long does it take you to resolve a conflict, either with a customer or an employee? You know, you can imagine a marriage where the the there's one spouse that's tracking just the finances, just the income, but he's never measuring communication or affection or conflict resolution. So eventually the bank account might get full, but the relationship's empty. And it's then it's over. You know, Ecclesiastes 4.9 says two are better than one. Relationships are strength multipliers. You know, Sam Walton said that there is only one boss, the customer. And I'd and I would actually add that customers are not and shouldn't be considered interruptions if you if you take a call from a customer. There are assignments, there are opportunities. You know, I worked for a boss for 20-some years, and he he he was the CEO of the company. And I gotta tell you, you know, he he took every call from a customer. There were very few times he wouldn't, he he refused to take a call from a customer. I can count less than than than five times in 20-some years did he not take a call from a customer. And there were reasons, there were good reasons for it. So he took every call because he saw it as an opportunity. He saw it as an assignment. He saw it as an opportunity to gain trust. And so it's important that you have this relational dashboard. Now, the next thing is you need a spiritual dashboard, which is where

A Spiritual Dashboard For Integrity

SPEAKER_00 19:00

most business podcasts will never tell you. They'll never go there. But this is Christian Business Concepts Podcast. So absolutely, we're going to talk about a spiritual dashboard, right? So you need to look at having your spiritual dashboard because you can grow financially while you're shrinking spiritually, if I can say it that way. I mean, you need to be looking at things like, you know, a loss of peace, maybe. That could be an indicator. Uh warning light, you know, maybe you're seeing yourself compromising integrity. That ought to be a warning light. Or maybe you're not praying at all or praying a lot less than you used to. That ought to be a warning light. You're maybe you're irritable. Maybe you're you're chronically irritable. Uh, that ought to be a warning light. Uh or pride. Pride's a warning light. Maybe you begin to isolate yourself more. That's a warning light. Uh maybe you've been taking shortcuts, but you've been you've been figuring out ways how you can rationalize your shortcuts. That should be a warning light. You know, Psalms 127 and 1 says, unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain that build it. You can build a very profitable structure for your organization, but if God doesn't authorize it, if it's not what he's wanting you to do, then you're wasting your time. You know, it may be success in the eyes of man, but it's failure when you compare it to eternity. I mean, you can imagine climbing a ladder for 20 years only to realize after 20 years it's been leaning against the wrong wall. You know, so so your spiritual dashboard asks things like, Am I operating at obedience? Am I am I compromising, am I compromising my conviction for convenience? Is my identity anchored in Christ, or is it is it anchored in performance? So those are the things that are important. Billy Graham once said, when wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost. When character is lost, all is lost. So character is a very specific spiritual metric that you need to measure. And it's got to be monitored. Now let's talk a little bit about data versus discernment, because this has got to be a critical leadership um distinction, I guess I'd say.

Data Versus Discernment In Decisions

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Um, because data will give you a lot of information. It informs. But having discernment will give you direction. Data tells you what's happening, but discernment begins to ask why it's happening. You know, Proverbs 5 or 3, 5, and 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path. So you don't lean to your own understanding. Don't don't worship the data. Don't let the data drive you. Um now there's other people who ignore. Ignore the data, but either one of those is wrong. Either one of those is to the extreme, and it's just a mistake. So here's the balance. You know, data is a tool, whereas discernment is a gift, and you need them both. You know, Nehemiah, when he set out to rebuild the walls in Jerusalem, the first thing he did when he got there was he took the time to inspect the walls before he started rebuilding them. So what was he doing? He was gathering data. But at the same time, he also prayed. And he got discernment on the timing. He also got discernment on the resistance and even any kind of spiritual opposition he saw coming. So you've got to analyze numbers, I get it, but you've also got to listen for God's prompting. You know, let me tell you a story. There was a CEO that that I once knew that he had explosive growth in his organization. You know, revenue doubled in three years. The investors, they they were so happy that things were going really well. But then employee turnover was 38%. Customer complaints were going up every month. And the margins, the margins were going down. And so that lag indicator of what was happening showed them that they were successful. But the leading indicators said that, hey, you're going to collapse in the near future. And with actually within two years, that company sold. But they sold because they had to. And they celebrated the wrong things, the wrong metrics, the wrong dashboard, and they ignored the other ones. They ignored the warning lights. So you can have growth, but it can hide a lot of the warning lights. So let's talk about designing a dashboard.

How To Design Your Dashboard

SPEAKER_00 23:56

So how do you build your dashboard? Well, you got to ask four questions. This is important. You have to ask four questions. Number one, what drives your long-term sustainability? If you want to be around for a long term, long time, what drives that? What causes that to happen? Number two, you've you've you've got to look at what predicts your financial health. What are the things that you really need to see that's going to help you predict your financial health? What predicts, what are the things uh that you need to look at that helps you to see your relational health between your customers, your vendors, your employees. What are those things? And then what are those things that not predicts but protects your spiritual, uh, your spiritual dashboard, your spiritual things in your life, your spiritual integrity. You know, and then what you want to do is is each of these uh dashboards that you're creating, you want to limit it. Limit it to about, oh, I'd say eight to 15 at the most, very critical metrics for each of those uh items on the dashboard. And because if you have too many of them, it's just a bunch of noise. You you just don't see anything. But uh, you know, a dashboard, remember, is not just to be this data warehouse. It's a tool to help bring clarity. You know, and so it's it's like healthy vigilance, you know. That's not fear, that's stewardship. And that's what this should be. That's what this should be. You know, Luke 16, 10 says, whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. So when you're monitoring the right things, you're monitoring and looking at the right metrics, well, that's just because you're a good steward.

unknown 25:52

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

So so so let me leave you with this. I don't believe that dashboards prevent the storms, but I do believe that the dashboard can help you navigate those storms. Um, I don't believe that the dashboard will eliminate risk, but they will reveal where some of those risks are. And as Christian leaders, I want you to remember this. You're you're not just building revenue, you're building a witness to the world as a Christian business leader. You're you're building a legacy, you're you're building a testimony. So, so you've got to begin to ask yourself, well, what am I looking at? What am I watching? What am I monitoring? And then what am I ignoring? And and what warning light have I just kind of normalized? Oh, that lights on all the time. You know, I had a car that had a lot of miles on it. Um it was it's it's a special car. I still have it. It's a special car to me. And uh, but it's got a lot of miles on it. And I have an emotional attachment to this car. But some, you know, there were times when there was a warning light and I would take it in, and they said, Well, you know, just we can't clear it. It won't clear. Uh, so just get used to it until we can figure out what the problem is. And so I'd have to drive the car for a week, maybe two, with a flashing red light that I just had to ignore. And so I just had to say, well, that's just normal right now. I can still drive it, everything's fine. So that's what I'm asking. And that's so important. What warning light have you normalized? What warning light have you if you have you normalized? See, revenue measures success, but integrity measures significance. And which one's really important? You know, you and you can't fix what you don't face. And if you don't measure the right things, the right metrics, then that's what you're doing. Um you're not facing the right things because healthy leaders, healthy leaders, they monitor what matters. They they really do. They monitor what matters. So you need to make sure that you design your leadership dashboard wisely. Okay. Measure it wisely. Because what you monitor consistently,

Prayer, Resources, And Closing Charge

SPEAKER_00 28:10

you improve intentionally. Lord, I thank you right now for helping us to learn that good things, Lord, great things don't happen by accident. Lord, help us to understand that we have to be purposeful. Lord, whether it's being a good mom or a good dad or being a good manager or a good CEO, it happens because we do things on purpose and with purpose. And Lord, I pray that you help us, help us, Lord, to measure the right things in our businesses. Help us to measure the right things in our organizations and even in our personal lives. Lord, help us to measure the important things that help us to find true godly success. And Lord, we thank you for that. We praise you for it, and we ask it all in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Well, I thank you again for listening to this week's Christian Business Concepts Podcast. And uh again, I just want to uh uh say that if you go to the website, uh, which is uh Christian Business Concepts.org.org, if you go to Christian Business Concepts.org, there's a resources page, and I want you to know that there is a checklist on uh there about how to create uh your dashboard. So you can go there and use that. It's a great tool, great checklist. It's free, it's for you. So just go there to the website and go to the resources and download that for your own personal use. All right. So I just want you to remember this. Make sure that you lead faithfully, measure wisely, and build eternally. And remember this, because this is the most important, and that is Jesus is Lord and He wants you blessed.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Thank you for tuning in to this week's Christian Business Concepts Podcast. Go to Christian Business Concepts.com for more information and resources. Be sure to check out another podcast that will help you to make your business and your personal life, your whole level of success.