Brian Gubernick presents the Qualitative Cockpit, a framework that gathers descriptive feedback from employees and customers alongside traditional metrics. Six internal questions ask what to start, stop, and keep doing, plus what drives revenue and cuts costs. The same structure applied to customers reveals what competitors are doing and how they actually feel about your business.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk a little bit about business, and I want to encourage you to get a pen and a notepad out because I'm going to run through a series of questions. You're going to want to write these down. You're going to want to ask your people. You're going to want to ask your employees, your customers. You're going to want to do some, some work here. So get that pen out, get that paper out, and let's go on a ride together today. Okay. Today we're going to talk about what I like to call the qualitative cockpit. Qualitative cockpit. Here's what I'm talking about. More oftentimes than not, when we start talking about how we're doing in a bit in our business, how we're performing, We 9 out of 10 times will default to quantitative analysis. Now, what is quantitative analysis? Quantitative data or analysis is anything that can be counted or measured. It refers to numbers, numerical data, quantitative, right? But qualitative, qualitative data or qualitative analysis is descriptive. It's referring to things that can be observed, but not usually measured. Things like colors or emotions or feelings, right? That's more qualitative. Today I want to talk about the qualitative cockpit because I think for all of us, most of us listening to No Days Off, we're entrepreneurs or we're involved in business or we're driving a business in some way. We always default to quantitative analysis. And I think that there's tremendous value to be had in qualitative analysis, and we could all incorporate more in our respective business worlds. So I want to start measuring some non-financial indicators, these things that matter, and arguably they matter more today than ever before, right? As the world evolves, as AI evolves, as technology continues to evolve, the numbers, while always important, may not tell the complete story. So let's go through this qualitative cockpit exercise. Why cockpit? Think about a cockpit as something that has a number of different tools, you know, measurement, measurements, numbers. But I'm calling this one not the quantitative but the qualitative. Okay, so let's go through this exercise. Here's what I want you to write down and for you to ask your agents, ask your employees, ask your people that comprise your business the following. What do you think our team should be doing? What do you think we should be doing? Next question. What do you think our team, our business, should stop doing? Last question in this sequence. What do you think our team should keep doing? Okay, let me run through those one more time. It's be, stop, and keep. What do you think we should stop doing? What do you think we should be doing? What do you think we should keep doing? 3 very distinct questions that have very distinct answers. Now, the next sequence of questions I want you to ask your, your agents, your employees, the people that make up your business. What do you believe would increase our revenue? What do you believe would decrease our costs? Lastly, in this sequence, what would make something easier or better for our customers or employees? All right, so these are, these are really 6 questions I ran through. 6 initial questions for you to really kind of reflect internally, internal within your company, and ask the people that make up your company, what should our team be doing? What should we stop doing? And what should we keep doing? What would increase our revenue? What would decrease our costs? And what would make something easier or better for our customers or employees? The answers that you will get from your people on these questions, to these questions, is going to give you a qualitative analysis as to how your business is performing. This is much different, as you can see, yet, you know, naturally tied to revenue figure, to profitability, to expenses, to payroll, to cost of sale, to metrics like the lead and lag measures we oftentimes talk about. How many dials did you make? How many conversations did you have? How many appointments did you go on? These are all incredibly important quantitative measurements, but they don't give you the emotion or the feel like the question, For example, what do you think our team should be doing? What do you think we should stop doing? Now, it goes without saying, when you ask these questions of your people, it will empower your people to contribute in a way they've never had to contribute or never been asked to contribute before. You now have our mission, a collective group's mission versus my mission. When our team is contributing to what it is we believe would increase our revenue and everybody's making a contribution there, or what it is that would make, you know, something easier for a customer. We now have input. We now have our DNA on the outcome. And that is incredibly empowering. Culturally, this sort of qualitative analysis, the byproduct of this qualitative analysis is it allows you to display to your people that they're being heard. Now, we just went internal. I want to go external. I want to do some external analysis from a qualitative perspective. Here are some questions to ask your customers, and you're going to see some similarities here in this first sequence. Questions to ask your customers, your best customers. What do you think our team or our business should be doing? What should we be doing? What do you think our team should stop doing? And what do you think our team should keep doing? Now I want you to close your eyes and picture yourself asking this, these questions of some of your best clients. What kind of feedback, feedback might you get? If you were to ask one of your best clients, what do you think our team should be doing? What should we really be doing? Maybe even better, what do you think our team should stop doing? Like, imagine someone who just experienced your team or your business, and then you ask, what do you think our team should stop doing? What might you learn when you hear that? And lastly, what do you think our team should keep doing? A customer that just worked with you, if you ask them, what do you think our team should keep doing? What might you hear? What would you hope to hear? And what might you hear and what you hope to hear, would they tie out? Maybe not. Maybe not. Now for your customers, again, final sequence of questions. How are you doing? Sounds funny, right? How are you doing? What's going on in your neighborhood? Now here's the— those are set up for this next one. What do you hear about our competitors? And lastly, how are we doing? All right. So for our customers, I'm going to run through these again. Remember these same customers that maybe you just asked, what should we be doing? What should we stop doing? And what should we keep doing? I want you to ask them, how are you doing? What's going on in your neighborhood? What do you hear about our competitors? What sort of noise are they making out there? And how are we doing? Fascinating answers you might get. So this is the Qualitative Cockpit exercise. I encourage you, if you're running a business and you're listening to this, or if you're a participant and contributing at a high level to a business and you're listening to this, I'm going to challenge you to play all out with this Qualitative Cockpit exercise. I want you to go through these internal and external questions. I guarantee you or your money back that you will learn things about your business that you didn't know prior to engaging these questions. I'm certain of it. How do I know? Well, honestly, I've gone through this a number of times, number of times with my people internally and our customers externally. And I am never, ever, ever not surprised by something or multiple things that I learned. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
