The Invisible KPI That Fuels Everything Else

What’s the difference between a team that’s just going through the motions and one that feels unstoppable?

Strategy, resources, and talent all play a role. But they don’t tell the whole story. 

The real differentiator is energy.

Not the caffeine kind. The shared pride, pace and pull that spreads through a team, turns smart plans into movement, and attracts people who want to be part of it.

Here’s the question I keep coming back to:

What would happen if leaders measured energy with the same discipline they measure revenue or profit?

Because energy is the invisible KPI that fuels everything else.

Energy Is the Only KPI

That’s why I loved hearing AG1 CMO Paulie Dery share exactly what this looks like in practice last month at the ADMA Global Forum 2025, a gathering of the world’s most innovative marketing minds which I was honoured to emcee.

Over 20 years, Paulie has become the person global brands call when they need transformation — from Uber’s #DeleteUber crisis recovery to Yeti’s $1.8 billion cultural phenomenon to AG1’s mastery of authentic connection at scale, Paulie knows how to make energy the lever that changes everything. 

And the first slide of his keynote summed it all up: 

“Energy is the only KPI.”

Not revenue, not market share, not productivity metrics or even engagement scores. Energy.

The shared current that lifts your people on the inside and draws customers, partners and talent on the outside.

He joked saying “You rarely hear, “wow, that brand’s so cool, but they’re bankrupt.”

And when he joined Uber during its darkest period, that energy was nowhere to be found.

The brand was in crisis mode – scandals dominated headlines, drivers openly complained about the company, and employees were embarrassed to say where they worked. 

He shared: “It was like getting on a plane and having the captain tell you, ‘This airline sucks. Good luck.’ “

So where did he start? Right back to where energy always begins: the people closest to the work.

He listened to the drivers, uncovered their real challenges, and acted. Initiatives like the Deaf Driver App — designed to empower deaf drivers with more independence — and Uber Pro — which funded tuition for drivers’ families — sent a signal of respect and showed them: we see you, we value you, we’re in this with you.

The result was more than better headlines. Pride returned. Energy was rebuilt from the inside out. And with it came the momentum for lasting change.

Energy vs. Engagement: Not the Same Thing

Before we go further, let’s be clear: energy isn’t just another word for engagement.

Engagement measures commitment: Do people care about the mission? Are they planning to stay? Do they feel connected to the work?

Energy measures momentum: Can you feel it when you walk in the room? Do things actually move? Is there pace, intensity, a pull that makes stuff happen?

You can have high engagement scores — people who believe in the mission and plan to stay— but if the energy’s dead, nothing moves. They’re committed but depleted. Connected but slow. Satisfied but not energised.

Think of it this way: Engagement is what people think and feel about their work. Energy is what you can sense in how they show up to do it.

It’s the difference between:

• A team that rates 8/10 on engagement surveys but takes three months to make a decision
• And a team that’s buzzing with the kind of intensity where ideas spark, execution accelerates, and momentum builds on itself

Low Energy = Low Results

There’s no pure “energy” metric, so the smartest read is to track two signals that map closely to it: engagement and burnout.

And right now, both are sending warning signals.

Burnout rates have hit record highs in 2025. Recent studies show between 66% and 82% of employees globally are either experiencing burnout or at risk.

Meanwhile Gallup research tells us only 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged, while 59% are quietly quitting (doing the bare minimum with no discretionary effort). 

Clear signals that most workplaces are running on low energy.

And that’s an expensive reality when you consider that engaged (and energised) teams drive 23% higher profitability, 18% higher productivity, and 12% better customer metrics. 

While everyone focuses on AI use cases for productivity (and debates the latest MIT study on whether there’s even an ROI to be achieved), maybe we should go back to our knitting and focus on pulling a lever we know works: energising our people. 

Energy Works Both Ways

Here’s what Paulie understands that most leaders miss: you can’t fake external energy if internal energy is dead. And you can’t sustain internal energy if the outside world thinks you’re a disaster.

Energy flows in both directions:

Inside → Outside:

• Proud employees become your best advocates
• Energised teams create better customer experiences
• Momentum attracts talent, partners, investors
• The story people tell about you from the inside shapes perception

Outside → Inside:

• Customer enthusiasm fuels employee pride
• Market momentum validates the work
• External recognition energises teams
• Positive narratives make people want to stay and contribute

Think about the brands and companies with real energy. Apple launches. Patagonia’s environmental stands. The Matildas during the World Cup. Tesla in its growth years.

You can feel it everywhere – employees proud to work there, customers advocating without being asked, talent desperate to join, media wanting to cover them, partners eager to collaborate.

That’s not just marketing. That’s energy as a strategic asset.

The mistake most leaders make? Treating internal culture and external brand as separate problems. They run employee engagement programs while the brand team works on storytelling. But energy doesn’t respect that boundary.

When Paulie rebuilt Uber’s energy, he didn’t just fix internal culture OR rebrand externally. He changed the reality for drivers (internal), which changed the stories being told (external), which changed how employees felt about their work (internal), which improved the customer experience (external).

Energy compounds when inside and outside reinforce each other. It dies when they’re misaligned.

The CEO’s Energy Blind Spot

And here’s the problem: senior leaders are often the last to see this misalignment because:

• They’re insulated from the daily grind
• Their work tends to be more energising (high stakes, strategic)
• People perform UP when leadership’s watching
• By the time it reaches the C-suite, morale is in free fall

Workforce Science Associates’ 2025 State of the Workforce report reveals the engagement gap between senior leaders and individual contributors has widened by 3.5 points since 2021.

You’re experiencing one workplace. Three levels down, they’re experiencing something entirely different.

Walk your own halls unannounced. Listen to the conversations. Watch how people move. Can you feel energy, or just compliance?

Is Your Team Buzzing or Flatlining?

Paulie’s Uber story is a wake-up call. Ignore energy, and performance flatlines.

But you don’t need to wait for a crisis to take action. The signals are always there if you pay attention.

Here are some telltale signs:

Energy present (Your team is energised):

• People volunteer for challenging projects without being asked
• Conversations continue after meetings officially end
• Team members bring solutions along with problems
• People speak positively about work when you’re not around
• New ideas come from unexpected sources

Or, as Paulie said, “Are your team proud to wear the shirt?”

Energy missing (Your team is going through the motions)

• People only do exactly what’s assigned
• Meetings end abruptly with no informal connection
• Team members bring problems and wait for you to solve them
• People are neutral or negative when describing their work to others
• All innovation has to come from leadership

If you checked more boxes in the “Energy Missing” section, don’t panic – but do act quickly. Energy deficits compound over time, but they’re also faster to rebuild than most leaders expect.

Three Ways to Boost Energy in Your Team Starting Now

From my work with leadership teams and my research into energy management, I’ve learned that most leaders approach energy management in reverse. They try to motivate people into engagement instead of creating the conditions where energy naturally flows.

Here’s what actually works — and it happens on two levels: cultural energy and individual energy.

Building Cultural Energy

1. Start with the People Closest to the Work

As Paulie’s Uber experience shows, as do many of the conversations I’ve had with turnaround CEOs over my career, energy rebuilds from the inside out. Begin with the people closest to your product, your customers, and your challenges. Go to them first. Listen. Ask, “What would make you proud to wear our company shirt?” Then act in ways that show you heard them.

2. Create Conditions for Energy, Not Just Output

Energy isn’t about charisma or hype. It’s about people feeling deeply connected to what they’re building. As I explored in my book The Leading Edge, this connection comes from three specific conditions:

• Visibility into the why, not just the what. People need to understand how their daily work connects to something meaningful. I’ve worked with leadership teams who transformed their cultures by shifting from “Here are our targets” to “Here’s why this matters.”
• Ownership, not just responsibility. When people feel they have a genuine stake in the outcome, not just a task to complete, their energy investment changes completely.
• Narrative that drives momentum. The stories we tell about our work shape how people feel about showing up to do it. Treat storytelling as strategy, because that’s exactly what it is.

Managing Individual Energy

3. Protect Peak Energy for Peak Work

This is perhaps the most practical takeaway from energy management: your team’s highest energy should go to your most important work, not to the work that happens to be scheduled first or feels most urgent.

This also means giving our teams’ permission to deprioritise work that is less important. 

Look at what’s consuming your team’s peak energy periods. Is it creative problem-solving and strategic thinking? Or is it status meetings and administrative tasks that could instead happen during natural low-energy times?

One of the confronting realities here for leaders is often that we’re the cause of some of this energy mismanagement. Nothing saps energy quite like a poorly run meeting that wastes everyone’s time.  

One leadership team I worked with discovered their Monday morning strategy sessions were consistently flat, not because people didn’t care, but because Monday mornings (statistically between 8-10am specifically), are when most people’s energy is naturally lowest. They moved the meeting to Tuesday afternoon and saw a significant  improvement in the quality of ideas generated.

The key is designing your most important work around when people naturally have energy to give, rather than forcing energy to fit your schedule.

Before you next have a strategy or innovation conversation, have a conversation with your team about when to have it and even where. Both these levers can dramatically impact energy levels for the better. 

And you’ve got to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can have these conversations with the team. Consider whether you’ve got the data and are making the daily small investments in your energy that allows you to get the best return on yourself. 

What Gets Measured Gets Managed

Don’t wait for energy to vanish before you tend to it. View it like compound interest and make small investments, often, in order to get the best returns.

Think about it: we obsess over quarterly numbers, track every conversion metric, and analyse performance data down to the decimal point.

But how many leaders are actively monitoring and measuring the one thing that drives all those other numbers? 

When it comes to your team, here are two questions to reflect on:

• What energy signals are you deliberately tracking in your business—and how quickly do you act when they start to fade?
• What’s one action you could take this week to raise your team’s energy by 10%?

In every high-performing team I’ve worked with, one thing stands out: when energy’s high, results follow — not the other way around.