In the latest issue of Fortune magazine, the cover story takes a look at how Bloomberg LP operates. The company aligns its employees on its business goals through prominent displays of sales metrics placed around the office:

There are close to 9,400 employees at Bloomberg, and all would cheer that analyst’s fidelity to the product. That’s because the company has a highly unusual compensation system that ties employee pay directly to the sale of terminals - or more precisely, to net installations, or “net installs.”

The concept behind this system is that everyone at the company should be driving toward only one goal: selling more Bloombergs. To underscore that point, large electronic signs hanging from the ceilings in the Bloomberg offices report progress on both sales and installations. Bells ring to mark a sale - multiple times if the news justifies it.

These displays, while very simple, help keep everyone in the office aware of the company’s overall performance and how they might be contributing to the company’s overall growth.

Knowing your numbers, and sharing some of those numbers with your employees, is a good motivator for everyone. So whether for your business it’s users, subscriptions, units sold, or page views, setting up a big display to share within the company can be fun and rewarding. Here at the studio, we’ll be setting up an always-on display to keep us mindful of our Harvest numbers.