The One Metric CEOs Should Obsess Over for Real Growth

You’ve built a team. You’ve invested in tools. You’re looking at dashboards and metrics every week. But amidst all these numbers, have you considered focusing on the one metric that matters the most?

Despite all of that activity, growth still feels…sluggish.

Sound familiar?

This isn’t a team problem or a product problem. It’s a focus problem. And it’s one we see across high-growth B2B companies all the time.

If your marketing efforts aren’t translating into real business outcomes, it may be time to stop tracking everything, and start rallying your team around One Metric That Matters.

The Problem with Too Many KPIs

Most marketing dashboards are bloated. Clicks, opens, likes, impressions, followers, MQLs, CAC, ROAS – you name it. But when everything is a priority, nothing is. And while your team might feel productive, the business impact can be hard to trace.

That’s the danger of vanity metrics: they look good in a report, but they don’t drive real growth.

In fact, research from McKinsey shows that investors are less impressed by short-term activity and more focused on fundamentals and a company’s long-term vision. CEOs and leadership teams who obsess over the right metric build more durable businesses that inspire investor confidence.

The One Metric That Matters (OMTM) is a proven way to cut through the noise, align your team, and drive focused execution. Originally introduced in Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll, it’s a simple, but strategic, shift in how growth gets done.

What Is the One Metric That Matters (OMTM)?

The OMTM is the single metric that has the greatest potential to move your business forward at this moment in time.

It’s not a permanent KPI. It evolves as your company grows. But for a specific stage, usually 2 to 4 months, it becomes your team’s North on the compass.

Here’s how it might look across different growth stages:

• Early-stage startup: OMTM = Activation Rate (how quickly users reach first value)
• Scaling: OMTM = User Retention or Engagement
• Mature: OMTM = Revenue per Account or Customer Lifetime Value

When everything in your funnel, including content and campaigns, is geared toward improving that one number, you get faster feedback, clearer decisions, and stronger outcomes.

OMTM vs. North Star Metric: What’s the difference?

One thing worth noting is that your OMTM is not your North Star Metric (NSM).

Your NSM is a long-term, company-wide metric that reflects sustained value delivery (e.g., ‘Monthly Active Users’, ‘Revenue Per Customer’, or ‘Cost Per Acquisition’).

The OMTM is more agile. It’s used by your growth or marketing team to drive short-term sprints toward a measurable outcome. It’s how you operationalize strategy, with focus, not just aspiration.

Why Growth-Focused CEOs Should Use OMTM?

As a CEO and founder, you’re not trying to optimize a landing page. You’re trying to optimize momentum.

That means aligning marketing and sales around a shared success metric, cutting through complexity, and focusing your resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.

When your team knows exactly what ‘winning’ looks like in the next 90 days, things change:

• Campaigns are sharper
• Messaging is tighter
• Meetings are shorter
• Results are measurable

And you, as the CEO, get one simple question to ask every week: Are we moving the needle on the One Metric That Matters?

A Quick Case Study: Focus Creates Lift

We worked with a B2B SaaS company that had the usual symptoms: strong product, capable team, but slow growth. Their dashboard showed 30+ KPIs, but none of them were moving.

We helped them identify a single OMTM: activation rate. Together, we aligned their landing pages, onboarding flows and nurture sequences around that single objective.

Result?

• 42% improvement in activation within 60 days
• Significant increase in product engagement
• Clear, confident marketing decisions (no guesswork required)

They didn’t change their tech stack. They changed their focus.

A Real Example: Focus on Conversion Rate Creates Alignment

We recently worked with a growing network of schools across Florida. The leadership team had been tracking dozens of metrics across marketing, admissions, and operations—but despite weekly dashboard reviews, they were struggling to answer one critical question: Why aren’t more leads turning into enrollments?

Like many multi-location organizations, their KPI stack included inquiries, contacted, tours, lead sources, social reach, impressions, campaign performance, and more—but there was no clear visibility into conversion at each stage of the funnel to identify why some schools were thriving while others lagged.

Together, we helped the team identify their One Metric That Matters: conversion rate from lead to registrations, tracked by school and in total, broken down by funnel stage:

• Lead generated

• Contacted

• Tour scheduled

• Tour completed

• Registration

Next, we created a breakdown by source campaign and separated it by each lead source (paid ads, organic search, paid social, influencer, direct mail, referral source, etc.) by funnel stage.

By shifting from “vanity metrics” to a unified OMTM, the organization moved from dashboard overwhelm to focused, measurable growth—one school at a time.

The Results:

• Improved collaboration across departments
• Weekly KPIs tied directly to enrollment growth, with clear benchmarks by school to drive coaching and resource allocation
• Increased conversion from lead to enrollment at multiple locations

Instead of chasing dozens of disconnected KPIs, the entire organization began rowing in the same direction—with a measurable, meaningful goal guiding the way.

Final Thought: Simplicity is a Growth Strategy

Clarity outperforms complexity.

The One Metric That Matters isn’t just a tactic, it’s a leadership tool. It helps your marketing and growth teams cut the fluff, build momentum, and align with the outcomes that matter most to your business.

At Rutkin Marketing, we help B2B leaders like you build leaner, more effective sales funnels by applying frameworks like OMTM and StoryBrand. Our goal? To help your team work smarter, communicate clearer and grow faster.

Want help identifying your One Metric That Matters? Let’s talk and together, we can find the metric that you’re missing.