You took the 7-Metric Assessment. You got your scorecard. You saw which areas are strong and which need work. Now what?
Most people stop here. They look at the results, feel validated or concerned, and then nothing changes. That's not because the insights weren't useful. It's because insight without action is just expensive self-awareness.
If you're going to improve your technology operations, you need a plan that's realistic about time, focus, and what improvement actually looks like.
Pick One Metric, Not Three
Low scores in multiple areas don't mean you tackle everything at once. Trying to improve alignment, efficiency, and security simultaneously is how you burn out your team and accomplish nothing meaningful.
Instead, identify which single metric, if improved, reduces friction across the board. Improving alignment often improves efficiency as a side effect. When leadership agrees on what technology should enable, teams stop building contradictory solutions.
Look at your lowest scores and ask: which one, if addressed, makes the others easier to solve? That's your focus for the next six months.
What Improvement Actually Looks Like
Better scores don't happen because you decided to care more. They happen because specific patterns change in ways people notice.
Better alignment means leadership stops contradicting each other in meetings about technology priorities. Better reliability means you stop getting urgent calls about systems being down. Better efficiency means staff spend less time on workarounds and manual processes.
Whatever metric you choose to improve, you'll know it's working when the complaints stop, the workarounds disappear, and technology starts feeling invisible instead of constantly demanding attention. These outcomes take time. Which brings us to the hard part.
Wait Six Months Before Retaking It
Thirty days is too soon. Ninety days is the absolute minimum. Real change takes 4-6 months before teams stop noticing the old pain points and start taking the new normal for granted. That's when perception actually shifts enough to register on a subjective assessment.
If you retake the assessment too soon, you're just retaking the same test with the same biases and calling it progress. Give yourself six months. Focus on one metric. Make changes. Let them settle. Then reassess.
Have Someone Else Take the Assessment Too
Before you retake the assessment yourself, have a colleague take it. Ideally someone who works in operations or sees the daily reality of how technology performs.
If you score alignment at 70% and your operations director scores it at 40%, that gap is the real problem. You're not seeing what they're experiencing. If you score reliability at 50% and your clinic manager scores it at 20%, you're underestimating how often systems fail in ways that disrupt patient care.
Those gaps matter more than the absolute scores. They tell you where communication has broken down and where your perception doesn't match reality.
What If You Can't Fix It Internally?
Some people take the assessment, look at the results, and realize they don't have the capacity or expertise to address what's broken. That's honest, not failure.
You have three options: accept the current state while you handle more urgent priorities, invest in building internal capability over time, or bring in outside help. All three are legitimate responses depending on your situation.
The key is being honest with yourself about which path you're actually on. If internal fixes aren't happening because you're stretched too thin or lack specific expertise, acknowledging that earlier rather than later saves everyone frustration.
The Real Goal
The 7-Metric Assessment isn't a test you pass or fail. It's a tool for organizing what you already know and tracking whether your efforts are working.
Take it. Pick one metric to improve. Make specific changes. Wait six months. Have a colleague take it too. Then retake it yourself and see if perception shifted.
If scores improved, you know your changes had impact. If they didn't, you learned something about what doesn't work. Either way, you're making decisions based on patterns instead of guessing.
If you haven't taken the assessment yet, it's at assessment.metric7.net. If you have, and you're not sure what to tackle first, that's a conversation worth having.