What if everyone in your organization could tell you what you were trying to achieve—and explain how their work could help?
That is what a strong North Star makes possible. It gives people an ambition bigger than their individual tasks or departmental targets. Think of a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG: something challenging enough to make people question familiar approaches and imagine better ones.
“No Client Left Behind”—or “Zero Dormancy”—expresses that ambition. Both mean keeping existing clients engaged, understood, supported, and valued. Everyone can consider how their work contributes, without being handed a prescribed list of activities.
The next step is to make progress visible. The North Star is the ambition; THE Measure tells us whether we are moving toward it. For Zero Dormancy, that means tracking the number of dormant clients. Put that number in large font, share it regularly, and give everyone a reason to care about its movement. Keep the supporting KPIs in small font, where they help teams investigate, learn, and act.
The “small font” strategy
Making one measure THE Measure gives the whole organization a shared focus. It is the number people see prominently, talk about regularly, and connect their own contribution to. The supporting KPIs still matter, but they sit in “small font”: they explain what is happening beneath the headline and help teams decide where to investigate or act.
“Small font” describes the emphasis in the organization-wide message, not the importance of the detail. Teams still track quality, risk, compliance, cost, and employee well-being. A better headline number is not enough if the underlying results tell a different story.
When you simplify the mission, you unlock the creativity of your workforce. Here are three ways that “The One Thing” transforms a business:
1. Empowerment: Learning from Disney. Disney Institute describes how a shared purpose—creating happiness—helps employees understand their contribution to the guest experience. Purpose gives people direction; training and clear boundaries help them act on it.
Imagine a customer returning a product that hasn’t met their expectations. A clear purpose—helping customers feel confident in their purchases—gives the employee direction. An established return policy gives them the authority and boundaries to resolve the issue without seeking a manager’s approval for every decision.
THE Measure could be the percentage of return requests resolved at the first point of contact. Everyone can contribute to making the experience easier. In small font, teams would track customer feedback, repeat product issues, policy exceptions, and the cost of returns. Those details help them understand whether faster resolutions are also fair, consistent, and building customer trust.
2. Creativity: A use-what-we-have constraint. Imagine asking a team to reduce manual processing using software the organization already owns before requesting another tool. The team might discover that an existing platform can automate approvals, replace a spreadsheet handoff, or provide reporting they have been creating manually. This “use what we have” constraint encourages people to explore overlooked capabilities and find creative ways to meet the business need. New software remains an option when the existing tools cannot meet the requirements, including security and reliability.
The visible measure could be cumulative savings from meeting business needs with tools we already own. A prominent icon on the intranet could celebrate those savings, with short examples of newly discovered features and the problems they solved. In small font, teams would distinguish avoided purchases from actual spending reductions and account for implementation effort, accuracy, and service quality. The message is simple: look at what we are achieving with what we have. The detail keeps the claim credible.
3. Radical retention: “no client left behind”. In financial services, I often argued for a goal of Zero Dormancy: making sure our existing clients continued to feel understood, supported, and valued. “No Client Left Behind” means making care for those relationships part of everyday work, long before a client starts quietly considering leaving.
That means asking the right questions to understand changing needs, following up when you say you will, fulfilling promises, and providing thoughtful advice that serves the client’s interests. It also means noticing unresolved concerns and taking responsibility for seeing them through.
The aim is to give clients an ongoing reason to trust you and stay. When teams consistently care for the existing client base, retention becomes a result of the relationship they build every day.
Turn the purpose into a measure
For Zero Dormancy, THE Measure is the number of dormant clients. Agree what “dormant” means, which clients are included, and how often the number is updated, so everyone is looking at the same picture. The organization can then rally behind bringing that number down while strengthening existing relationships.
Imagine a weekly update on the intranet with one large number: “Dormant clients: 2,900—down from 3,000 last month.” Underneath, in small font, it explains the movement: 70 client relationships closed, 40 reactivated, and 10 newly dormant. Those changes reconcile to the reduction of 100, but they do not all mean the same thing.
The people responsible for the supporting KPIs would dig further. Why were those 70 relationships closed? Were they administrative closures because there were no funds and the clients could not be reached, or did clients choose to leave? Closing an inactive relationship may improve the count without improving retention. The headline needs that context.
For the 40 reactivated clients, did reconnecting lead to new business or a more useful relationship? Teams might track that group over time to see whether engagement and business grow. They would also investigate what happened with the 10 clients who became dormant and what could have helped them sooner.
That learning can lead to practical action. For example, a connector—a link between systems—could supply transaction activity to a workflow that prompts the responsible team to reach out after 30 days without a transaction. The team would check whether that interval makes sense for the client and service, respect contact preferences, and follow through on what they learn. It is an early prompt for care, not an automatic declaration that a client is dormant.
The same principle applies across the examples: a visible service result or savings achieved with existing software. Keep THE Measure prominent and share progress regularly. Let teams use the supporting detail to ask better questions, propose improvements, and assess whether those improvements work.
The North Star gives everyone a common direction, without prescribing every step. The headline brings people together; the small-font measures help them understand what to do next.
Source: Disney Institute on shared purpose and employee empowerment. The store-return and software examples are illustrative.