17 metrics executives track religiously

Metrics can tell you if you’re going the right direction or not. They can also be a waste of time if the metrics are noise instead of strong signals. There is no one right answer to which metrics to use, but understanding how others use them can turn on a light bulb for new ideas. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members what metrics they track obsessively—and why— and the answers we share may have you rethinking your own tracking.

1. CONVERSION AND RETENTION

I track a lot of metrics and it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of the business, but as a subscription business the metrics of conversion and retention are my twin North Stars. What percentage of visitors in trial are going to become paid subscribers, and what percentage of them will remain paid subscribers in three months? Really these metrics are a reflection of the benefit customers get from our products showing they are valuable enough for someone to pay us and that they are valuable enough for them to stick around. Nearly all of the other metrics that I obsessively check flow from these two. — Tony Grimminck, Scribd, Inc.

2. ORGANIC GOOGLE SEARCH

I track organic Google search above almost everything. You can buy impressions, but you can’t buy someone typing your brand name unprompted. It’s the cleanest signal of real demand. I also monitor inbound pull—which partners, retailers, or creators are reaching out to us. When serious brands want proximity, it means you’re culturally relevant. If search and inbound drop when spend drops, you’re renting attention, not building equity. And then there’s the quiet test: What happens when we ease off spend? Do we disappear or are we building something worthy of the space we’ve been given? — Emily Kortlang, Yerba Madre

3. EBITDA

I track EBITDA because it tells me, without any spin, whether our core business is creating the level of profitability that powers reinvestment and growth for our employee owners. I track labor as a percentage of net revenue, staff churn, and our employee culture index scores because they tell me how efficiently we’re deploying our talent and how engaged our people are in building a career here. — Steven McKay, DLR Group

4. HOW CLIENTS RANK IN AI PROMPTS

Right now, we’re obsessively tracking how our clients rank in prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. It’s a new metric for us, but an important one. We want to see how clients show up next to competitors and what narratives or keywords are driving visibility. We layer that with media coverage and domain authority to understand how those stories are performing in the real world. — Kalie Moore, High Vibe PR

5. CONTENT AND PRODUCTS

We measure content and products to see how they drive behavior change, build confidence, and turn users into advocates for themselves. Engagement matters, but for us the real signal of success is when people feel empowered to act. As we build for people with real, timely needs, we track both quantitative and qualitative insights to ensure we’re solving the right problems, not guessing. That requires constant testing, learning, and refining. Across industries, leaders have to stay close to the people they serve to ensure they’re truly advancing the mission they set out to achieve. — Nathan Friedman, Understood.org

6. INTERNAL ALIGNMENT AND EXTERNAL TRACTION

I track two buckets: internal alignment and external traction. Internally, we run on objectives and key results because it forces clarity. Everyone knows what they’re responsible for and how it ties to business impact. When that breaks, you feel it. When it works, things move fast. Externally, I watch streaming and radio. Streaming shows what’s happening right now, which cities are reacting, whether a record is moving culturally. Radio signals longevity. It’s slower, but it shows real staying power. Together, they tell me if we’re seeing noise or building something durable. You need both. — Logan Mulvey, GoDigital Music

7. CUSTOMER METRICS

As CEO, I obsess over daily and weekly metrics like monthly recurring revenue growth, subscription churn, data-plan attach rate, NPS, transmission success rate, and early field reliability (battery life, zero-transmission failures), because recurring revenue powers the business. Any drop in trust kills referrals fast. If customer metrics are healthy so is our business. — Jeff Peel, Tactacam

8. RETENTION AND SAVINGS

We track retention of our members, as we offer a lifelong commitment to our C-suite women leaders to provide them with one-on-one peer mentoring for life. This commitment increases our retention to 99%. We also track the mentor/mentee relationship. Lastly, we track our savings, which annually exceed $500,000. — Larraine Segil, Exceptional Women Alliance

9. ENGAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

We track engagement and customer satisfaction obsessively. For us, engagement isn’t just a usage metric, it’s a signal of trust. When someone actively redeems and returns to our platform, that tells us the experience is resonating. Customer satisfaction is even more important. If people feel valued rather than marketed to, long-term relationships follow—and so does durable revenue for our partners. — Elery Pfeffer, Nift

10. WHERE OUR BUSINESS IS GOING

When reviewing metrics, I’m looking for information about where our business is going, not lagging indicators of where we’ve been, and early warning signs of issues that may be developing. For growth, I look at pipeline coverage and conversion. For execution, I review forecast accuracy and time to revenue. For customer value, it’s our net retention rate and advocacy score. Looking at these numbers gives me a good idea of not only how we’re performing, but how efficiently we’re executing and what areas need extra attention. — Steve Holdridge, Dayforce

11. JOBS AND ECONOMICS REPORTS

I obsessively track LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise reports and LinkedIn’s Economic Graph workforce data and research; they are great reads and provide ongoing snapshots on where the labor market, productivity and future of work are moving broadly. I also track the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Productivity and Costs report, to understand where workplace productivity is heading. It’s an excellent dashboard across key indicators and in recent years can be a strong signal on how technology, automation, and operating‑model changes are actually changing worker productivity at scale. — Alice Mann, Mann Partners

12. PROGRESS

Progress against the big rocks we established. Setting broad, strategic yet outcome-based goals align the entire organization and drive results. — Michael Tannenbaum, Figure

13. ENGAGEMENT, FRICTION, AND CLIENT IMPACT

I think about performance in three pillars: people, process, and product. Some of it is measurable. Some of it you feel. Both matter. On people, I track engagement, retention of top talent, and how often we promote from within. If the bench isn’t deep, nothing scales. On process, I look at friction. How fast do we decide? Is delivery predictable? The best strategy collapses without operational clarity. On product, I focus on client impact, repeat business, and quality. We have a Slack channel devoted to verbatim client praise. Data matters. But when you’re the first call a client makes on their hardest day, that’s the clearest signal of all. — Peter Smart, Fantasy

14. THE FUNNEL

For Scribbly, my D2C business, I use every tiny tracking pixel in my funnel. I built a custom dashboard for myself and trained an AI agent to analyze the data just the way I want it—way better than those messy SaaS analytics dashboards that are impossible to decipher. — Lindsey Witmer Collins, WLCM Studio

15. NON-CUMULATIVE DATA

Cumulative data is meaningful, but only non-cumulative data holds you accountable. For us, one such metric is how many of the Solvers selected over the past five years are still operational. We’re at 96%. That tells me our selection methods and support programs have a real impact, given that industry averages hover around 70-80%. Something else a company can track is instead of asking “where are you now?” ask “how far have you come?” That’s harder to quantify than dollars raised or media hits, but it’s the only number that tells me whether we’re doing our job. Revenue, employees, money raised—those keep the lights on. But the distance traveled keeps us honest about the mission. — Hala Hanna, MIT Solve

16. BOOMERANGS AND EMPLOYEE DEPARTURES

We’ve been focused on people-centric workplace data since we started building a center of gravity for brilliant minds almost three decades ago. We regard the percentage of boomerangs in a company as a leading indicator of having a positive, thriving culture that people value and want to be part of. At the other end of the spectrum, the rate of regrettable departures usually signals when there are culture issues that must be addressed. — Leerom Segal, Klick Health

17. ENGAGEMENT QUALITY, AUDIENCE SENTIMENT, AND BRAND LIFT

We prioritize engagement quality, audience sentiment, and brand lift because they tie directly to real business outcomes, not vanity metrics. We trademarked “true human influence” to make influencer marketing more measurable, backing it with proprietary technology and trusted measurement partners to ensure we deliver against brand KPIs. And with AI driving the convergence of creator and affiliate marketing, we can now connect authentic storytelling to commerce at scale. — Ben Jeffries, Influencer