Stay Ahead of Me KPI
Define your right hand's success with one simple standard, not a metrics sprawl
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 80%
For a senior right hand, Jasmine Star rejects a sprawl of metrics in favor of one memorable standard: 'stay ahead of me.' Because a COO's work spans big-picture forecasting and execution, she measures effort and execution rather than uncontrollable outcomes, defining success as flawlessly executing the objectives she and her COO set together in advance. She derives KPIs by starting from what she values most for the business's growth and pace, then finding a way to measure it. She adds a second lens: naming the behaviors that would make her fire the person (for her, any violation of trust), then treating that as an explicit boundary. The mechanism gives an ambiguous operational role a clear, mutually understood definition of winning without pretending the founder can dictate every metric.
Origin
Extracted from The Jasmine Star Show
Core principles
- 01Start KPIs from what you value most for growth, then find a way to measure it
- 02You can't control outcomes, so hold people accountable for effort and flawless execution
- 03A single clear standard beats a vague sprawl of metrics for a senior operator
- 04Name the trust violations that would make you fire them, and turn them into a boundary
- 05Define what success looks like together, in advance and specifically
How to run it
- 1
Start from what you value most
Identify the things most valuable to your growth and increasing your pace before reaching for any metric.
Pro tip KPIs should follow your priorities, not the other way around.
- 2
Compress it into one standard
Translate that top priority into a single memorable expectation. For Jasmine's COO it is simply 'stay ahead of me.'
Pro tip A vivid one-line standard is more usable day-to-day than a dashboard for a senior operator.
Watch out It will sound vague to outsiders; that's acceptable if you and the person both understand it.
- 3
Define success together, in advance
Sit down with your right hand and specifically state 'we are successful when one, two, three happens' for the year.
Pro tip Jasmine and her COO did this in December for the following year.
- 4
Measure effort, not outcome
Hold the person accountable for flawlessly executing the stated objectives, since neither of you controls the final outcome.
Pro tip 'Success is flawlessly executing on our stated objectives and projects' keeps focus on what's controllable.
- 5
Name your fireable lines
Ask what this person could do that would make you mad or fire them, name it, and make avoiding it an explicit responsibility.
Pro tip For Jasmine the single fireable line is any violation of trust.
In the wild
When a mastermind member asked how Jasmine sets KPIs for high-level operational roles, Jasmine explained she keeps it radically simple. She sets her COO's KPI as 'stay ahead of me' and defines success as flawlessly executing the objectives they agreed on together in December for the coming year. For an operations person focused purely on operations, she suggests the KPI might instead be that 90% of all KPIs across the team are met, since that person's job is ensuring everyone has the support to hit their goals.
→ A nebulous senior role gets a clear, shared definition of winning.
Common mistakes
Holding people to outcomes they can't control
Judging a COO on results rather than execution punishes them for factors outside their control and erodes the effort-based accountability that actually drives performance.
Leaving success undefined
Without a specific, jointly-agreed 'we are successful when' statement, the role stays nebulous and neither party can coach to it.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders setting expectations for a COO, integrator, or director of operations whose role blends big-picture and execution.
Not ideal for
Frontline or purely tactical roles where success is already captured by concrete, task-level metrics.
From the transcript
“I simply said your KPI, your key performance indicator, how you know you're winning. Stay ahead of me. That's it.”
“Success is flawlessly executing on our stated objectives and projects. That's it.”
From the episode
Finding Your Dream COO and Defining Success for Their Role