What Your CEO Really Wants to Know

It's not a litany of perfectly calibrated metrics.

Imagine you’re standing at the desk of a busy car rental agency. “Do you have a car available?” you ask.

“Let’s see.” The agent taps at the keyboard. “We’re approaching a holiday weekend... and the system shows demand typically reaching a peak tomorrow. That said, weather patterns can disrupt reservations. I’m seeing a twenty percent chance of rain for today.”

You glance at your watch. “Right. Any car is fine.”

“What’s interesting is that our bookings are stable this year, despite all the Waymos on the road now. We feel that we serve a fundamentally different need in the market.”

“Okay. Do you have a car available?”

“I will tell you what is changing,” the agent says. “We get nearly eighty-three percent of our bookings online now, with only a five percent cancellation rate.”

At this point in the exchange, you’d probably be pretty annoyed. You have one objective—to rent a car—and you’re not getting the one answer you need: IS THERE A CAR TO RENT?