The Number Your Team Isn't Tracking
On why “Since” and “Upcoming” became the most honest metrics in our office.
There is a particular kind of meeting that most teams recognize.
Everyone is present. Updates are delivered. Action items are assigned. On paper, nothing is wrong. Yet something feels slightly off. Energy is lower than it used to be. The person who once challenged assumptions now agrees too quickly. Conversations end a little faster.
No one raises a concern because there is no clear incident to point to.
What is happening is usually drift.
Not dramatic conflict. Not failure. Just gradual misalignment. Rituals get postponed. Informal check-ins disappear. The last meaningful conversation about how the team is actually doing becomes harder to remember.
And that is the problem. No one remembers when it was.
Tracking the Invisible
Two years ago, I began tracking simple team rhythms.
We had agreed to run a retrospective every three weeks. It kept slipping. First by a few days, then by a week. At one point, we realized it had been eleven weeks since the last one. In that gap, several tensions had surfaced quietly and hardened.
None of them were catastrophic. All of them would have been easier to address earlier.
So we added one visible number:
“Days since last retrospective.”
The number alone changed behavior. When it crossed thirty days, it created a subtle discomfort. Not because thirty is inherently meaningful, but because we knew from experience that beyond that window, misunderstandings linger longer and assumptions go unchallenged.
The metric did not measure productivity. It measured attention.
Upcoming Is About Output
Most teams already track the future. Next sprint. Next release. Next performance review. These are necessary. They create direction and accountability.
But they are output-focused. They answer the question: What are we shipping?
They do not answer: How are we relating?
A team can hit every deadline and still erode internally.
"A simple 'since' counter does not solve relational drift. It surfaces it. It makes neglect harder to ignore."
Since Is About Relationship
The more revealing numbers are often retrospective.
“Days since we had lunch together.”
“Days since we ran a retro.”
“Days since the founders had an unstructured conversation.”
In remote and hybrid environments, casual connection does not happen accidentally. It has to be noticed and scheduled. When the number grows quietly, so does distance.
This becomes especially important at the founder level. Many companies do not collapse because of product-market fit or funding gaps. They strain because the founding relationship weakens. There is no dashboard that shows this.
“Days since we talked honestly about how we are doing as partners” is not a metric investors ask for. It may be one of the most important.
Start With One Number
Not everything meaningful can be quantified. But some things benefit from visibility.
A simple “since” counter does not solve relational drift. It surfaces it. It makes neglect harder to ignore.
If something important to your team has not been discussed in a while, track it. Not obsessively. Just visibly.
The question is simple.
What is the number your team is not tracking?
Start there.
