If you need just one metric to judge anything in your professional life, it's the success metric.
Let's define the term so that we are on the same page: A success metric is a quantifiable measure you choose in advance to assess whether an effort has achieved its goal within a pre-defined timeline.
A few things to note:
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It's a singular (success metric) and not plural (success metrics). You will need additional supporting metrics to measure other aspects, but keep the success metric as the primary metric (north star). Some orgs/folks come up with a multitude of metrics to dilute the importance of any single one. You might have seen folks glossing over the 2 metrics that aren't great, but hey, look here, these 9 are working well.
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State the success metric in dollars. It can be revenue earned, cost saved, or any other metric converted into dollars. A Dollar metric has 2 benefits:
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It's tough to game the dollar metric. People will intentionally or unconsciously game metrics, but when it comes to a dollar figure, they will be more cautious. Fudging a dollar metric is a fraud, but slicing and dicing the data (by cohort, segment, channel, etc.) to get more impressive numbers of active users, time saved by this feature, etc., is common.
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Even if the dollar figure is a derivative metric, it will bring rigor to your evaluation. For example, it's very easy to claim that this feature saved users 1 hour a day. At $35/hr, this translates to a $770 monthly saving ($35 * 22 days) for the user. If you save customers $770, you can charge them 10% of that amount ($77). If you can't charge customers that amount, there is an issue somewhere; either with the 1-hour-per-day effort-saving claim or something else. Dollar metric pushes you to analyze more rigorously and question glib metrics.
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When you communicate the success metric to your team and stakeholders, you bring accountability to the forefront. Everyone involved knows from day 1 what you intend to achieve. It pushes everyone to think and communicate more clearly, execute swiftly, and hold each other accountable.
A well-published categorical success metric makes things binary: either you succeed, or you fail. To learn and improve in life, this binary outcome is really important because, most of the time, things go on, with people hopping from one thing to another without any outcome.
A success metric should always have a time frame. A success metric without a timeline is just a dream. Setting a timeline will bring focus and urgency, and a checkpoint to assess the outcome. If more time is required, reassess the success metric and (always) define the new timeline.
The proverb "To a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail." suggests that you should not rely solely on one tool (i.e., a hammer) as a hammer may not be the right tool in every context. You can have supporting tools or metrics, but if you were to pick just one tool at the workplace, then a success metric is the way to go.