How to Find Your Most Important Number and Align Your Entire Company Around It
- Chelsey Reynolds
- Nov 25
- 4 min read
Founders often ask themselves the same question: how do I get my entire team truly aligned?
Lee Benson has a simple but powerful answer. After building and exiting multiple companies (including one that scaled to hundreds of employees and nine-figure revenue), he developed the MIND Methodology to help leaders focus on what matters most: identifying and driving their most important number.
In this episode of the Growth Department podcast, Chelsey Reynolds sits down with Lee to unpack how any leader can use this approach to create clarity, boost culture, and grow responsibly.
From Rock Bands to Boardrooms
Lee’s career didn’t begin in a boardroom. In the 1980s, he played over 1,000 shows in a rock band before moving into entrepreneurship. That creative energy and grit carried into his companies, where he built eight businesses, scaled multiple to major exits, and discovered a universal principle: leaders win when they focus on value creation.
For Lee, value creation comes in three forms:
Material value: financial performance and cash flow.
Emotional energy: the environment leaders create that inspires teams to bring their best.
Spiritual value: the connectedness and community that makes work meaningful.
The Most Important Number (MIN)
Most leaders measure dozens of KPIs, but Lee argues that what really matters is defining one number that reflects the true value of the business. That number may differ by company—revenue, cash flow, or EBITDA—but it should capture whether the company is truly increasing in value.
From there, each department defines its own most important number that ties back to the top. Sales, HR, operations, they all align their work to measurable value creation.
As Lee puts it, this creates “productive engagement,” where every team member knows the value they’re expected to create and how it will be measured.
Avoiding the KPI Trap
Lee warns leaders not to confuse activity metrics with value creation. For example, HR might think retention is its most important number, but retention alone could mean keeping underperformers. A stronger metric would be the percentage of seats filled with capable people. Similarly, a marketing team might boast about generating leads, but if those leads don’t convert, the value isn’t real.
The key is asking: what behaviors does this number drive, and are those behaviors helping or strengthening the business long-term?
Culture as a Competitive Advantage
Culture isn’t just slogans on the wall. For Lee, culture means the behaviors and attitudes that create the most value. He challenges leaders to look at their top competitors and ask: what are the best people on their best days doing? Then, build conditions so that 50 percent or more of your team consistently performs at that level or better.
This approach turns culture into a measurable driver of financial results. When every employee is aligned around one number and incentivized to win together, finger-pointing disappears, and collaboration takes center stage.
The MIND Methodology in Action
The MIND Methodology (Most Important Number and Drivers) helps leaders connect clarity with execution. The “drivers” are the categories of work that move the most important number. For example, in sales, drivers might include lead quality, closing percentage, or customer retention. Tracking these ensures the team stays focused on what moves the needle.
Lee has implemented this system in startups, mid-sized businesses, and global companies. The results are striking: one manufacturer stuck at $400,000 in monthly profit grew to $1.2 million per month in just 15 months after adopting the MIND Methodology.
Radical Transparency
Lee also advocates for open financials. In his companies, every employee could access plain-language financial statements. This transparency built trust, surfaced cost-saving ideas, and made everyone feel like a true stakeholder. He believes hiding financials out of fear backfires; openness empowers employees to contribute to value creation.
The Leadership Mindset
For Lee, leadership comes down to two responsibilities: deliver results and create an environment where team members are intrinsically motivated to add more value over time. That means leaders can’t tolerate “toxic high performers.” If someone hits their numbers but destroys culture, the net effect is negative. Removing them often elevates the entire team.
He also reminds founders that growth is not about arbitrary targets like “50 percent per year.” Instead, the focus should be on responsible growth that makes sense for the business and strengthens its long-term health.
Lessons for Founders
Lee left listeners with a powerful reminder: “There is always a better way than you can think of today, and it’s your job to find it.”
For founders, that means:
Clarify the most important number for your business.
Cascade that number to every team and align their drivers.
Build culture around behaviors that create measurable value.
Share financials and trust your team with the bullseye.
Focus on responsible growth that strengthens long-term success.
The outcome is a thriving business where profits grow alongside a team that feels energized, connected, and proud of the value they’re creating together.
Learn more about Lee and follow his team here:
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