The Metric Gap
We’ve trained leaders to manage the metric, not the people.
I had a conversation this week about being an other’s focused leader. We were discussing the difference between a self-focused leader and an others’-focused leader. I began to question if driving leaders to achieve aggressive growth KPIs has inadvertently stunted the necessary skills for them to develop the individuals on their teams to meet those numbers.
In the last couple of years, companies have been trimming middle management as a cost savings. When companies remove managers, they are also removing the very people who train and mentor the people making the business run, new employees, and interns—the future—the pipeline that determines what the company becomes over time.
What remains are fewer managers focused on output rather than helping their teams have agency to make good decisions and exceed expectations.
Gallup found the average number of people reporting to managers has increased from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025—nearly a 50% increase. (1) Further, Gallup found managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. (2) That statistic is from 2015, before the middle management squeeze. Imagine what percentage today and its impact on business.
It’s an interesting question. When I hear companies talk about training, it is typically targeted training for technology or compliance. When they talk about development, it typically involves their top leaders.
Companies utilize their HR departments and Learning and Development teams if they have them to onboard new employees and own the formal training. Those things haven’t changed. What has changed is the direct line manager’s ability to have time to develop team members beyond practical role-specific execution.
Today HR leaders’ highest priority is building internal capability for the future which includes both hiring workers with the right skills and upskilling their workforce. The Society for Human Resource Management found nearly 41% of HR professionals train existing employees for hard-to-fill roles (3) and a SHRM webinar promotion states 61% of organizations determine upskilling priorities based on manager gut feel rather than data (4) —though they don’t publish the study behind that number.
But this is not an article promoting HR training but rather posing the question to companies if the cost-cutting pipeline point is going to be a future strategy for revenue growth. I recognize the importance of data to measure and track effort. But when the focus is purely on the reports and not what sits underneath, that’s when a risk you can’t see becomes the one that costs you.
This becomes even more critical using an M&A lens. Due diligence is an exercise in digging into the data—a critical and effective measure of viability. But when success, retention, and culture is relegated to word-of-mouth and walk throughs, a lot can be hidden under the surface.
Companies who continue to train leaders to manage the metric and don’t allow them the bandwidth or provide them with skills will continue to struggle and add pressure on their teams and budgets.
Training Magazine’s 2025 Training Industry Report found US training expenditures rose 4.9% in 2025. The same report shows the cost per formal learning hour jumped 34% year-over-year while the actual hours of training delivered per employee fell from 17.4 to 13.7. (5)
Many companies are looking to hire employees with the right skill sets rather than upskilling. SHRM says on average, hiring a new employee costs nearly $4,700, including the hard costs associated with advertising and onboarding but can increase up to 3 times the amount of the employee’s annual salary. Yet 66% of companies spend $3,000 or less for training per employee in a year. (6)
In the companies I work with, the gaps hidden underneath planning and execution live in the people layer. The teams that have others’-focused leaders who engage and develop their people are the ones who deliver results. Those skills drive more revenue than pushing to a metric ever will.
This article was written by a human. The perspective is mine—based on my questions, observations and experience.
I use AI as a thought partner to challenge my thinking, identify gaps, and surface perspectives I hadn’t considered. Anything that comes from that goes back through me. I push back, verify, and decide what gets included. I only use data from primary sources. They are clearly identified in my writing with links for you. Before publishing, I run my final draft through AI again for spelling and grammar. Typos and grammar mistakes still happen. I’m not perfect and neither is AI.
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