Why You Can't Trust the Process Unless You Measure It

"Trust the process."

You've heard it countless times. Coaches say it. Athletes repeat it. Teams build their culture around it. But here's the question that should keep every high-performance director awake at night:

How can you trust a process you can't actually measure?

At EquiRatings, this question isn't philosophical—it's personal. Our entire company was born from a moment of frustration that every athlete, coach, and performance director has experienced: standing at a major championship, facing a disappointing result, and wondering, "Have I achieved nothing? Are we still the same team that we were four years ago?"

The truth is brutal and simple: If you want to manage performance, you need to be able to measure it.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

For ten years, we've worked with high-performance teams across the globe, and we've discovered something that challenges conventional wisdom:

Most countries don't have a selection problem. They have a performance problem.

Think about how many times have you heard qualitative, subjective language used to assess talent? Horses described as "reliable" or "consistent" or "able to handle the big stage." Athletes praised for their "mental toughness" or being "able to deliver when it matters." These assessments aren't wrong—but they are incomplete.

Without an objective measurement, you're flying blind. What were the big days? How big were they? How many times have they delivered on these days? Is it even the same horse? A manager or a rider might know internally that improvement has occurred, but if you can't quantify it, how do you prove it? How do you replicate it? How do you trust that your process is actually working?

The Power of Measurement: A Personal Story

The drive to found EquiRatings came from me experiencing similar disappointing outcomes at the World Championships in 2010 and 2014. Four years of work. Four years of training. And on paper, nothing to show for it.

That lack of measurables meant the process couldn't be trusted. EquiRatings was born from a desire to create a process. A system that could be tested, replicated and adapted. 

By quantifying progress through metrics that actually mean something, I moved from the bottom 10% of global performers in show jumping to one of the best within two years. This wasn't luck or sudden talent—it was clarity. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of planning. Clarity about what needed to improve and by how much. My dressage could improve, cross-country requires constant practice but my biggest gains were clearly going to come by improving my jumping. Of course, I needed a training plan and exercises but to test if they were actually improving, I needed something to measure it against - I needed to stand on the scales. 

The personal progress was so tangible, so undeniable, that it solidified our mission: to give every high-performance team the tools to measure what matters most—their chance of success. If medals are the goal, do you know your likelihood of winning one, and how its measured or are you just hoping? 

What Actually Matters: The Metrics That Drive Performance

We've spent a decade solving a problem that has existed in sport for generations. Results have always been data, but the manual computation and disparity between competitions made meaningful comparison nearly impossible.

Our solution? Put a number on the quality of every performance. But not just any number—metrics that actually predict future success.

HPR: Your Performance Stopwatch

The High Performance Rating is a single-performance measurement, like a runner's Personal Best. But it does something traditional measures can't: it accounts for the variables that actually matter.

Not all top-level competitions are equivalent. Winning at Aachen is different from winning elsewhere. Winning Badminton one year is not the same as winning it another year. Course difficulty varies. Field Strength changes. The quality of your opponents matters. The HPR factors in all of this to give you an objective measure of your performance quality.

Think about runners for a moment. If they didn't have a stopwatch, they wouldn't know why they need to run faster. The HPR is that stopwatch for equestrian sport. It shows athletes the "why" behind their results and gives them the feedback they need to improve. 

These metrics help the best become better.

ELO: The Consistency Factor

While HPR measures individual performances, the ELO rating captures something equally crucial: long-term consistency. Lots of horses will have a good day. This is an objective horse rating (adapted from the Elo system originally developed for chess). It is a measure of how competitively you are performing and the quality of opponents you are beating. The rating works like a trading system: at every competition, a horse gives Elo points to the horses who finish ahead of it while also taking Elo points from the horses it beats. 

In Eventing, it helps identify horses who may not be winning but are consistently performing well against good opponents. In Jumping, it does the same but given the frequency at which the horses compete, and the varying competitions and series, it creates a great list.

It is specifically optimized for predictive performance. It's highly correlated with the probability of future success, which means it doesn't just tell you where you've been—it tells you where you're going. In Jumping, horses with higher Elo ratings tend to jump more clears. In Eventing, if you haven't reached a certain Elo threshold by a certain age, we can say with a good degree of confidence that it's against the odds that you will. 

From Management to Improvement

When we started EquiRatings, the value proposition for a federation was clear: better selection decisions, improved funding applications, objective dispute resolution, enhanced sponsorship opportunities.

These benefits remain, but our message includes athletes. We've seen this work. We've tracked the athletes. We've witnessed the transformation that happens when people receive objective feedback on their performance.

Now we have the confidence to say something bolder:

This is going to help you improve.

When you can see your position objectively, track 12-month trends, identify specific strengths and weaknesses, and know exactly where you need to get to—you gain the power to make targeted, actionable changes.

This applies across contexts. In sport. In business. In any competitive environment. When you raise the bar and give ambitious people a target, something they can see and aim for, they will jump over it.

Even the Best Need Feedback

Here's something most people don't talk about: even the most focused, talented athletes can lose their edge without metrics.

During a period of professional growth and family commitment, performance on one particular horse definitely slid for me. Why? Because the metrics weren't being checked. The moment those numbers were reviewed again—seeing a ranking in the 40th percentile in certain areas—it served as both a wake-up call and a source of motivation.

That data led to actionable changes: entering extra training shows, focusing on specific weaknesses, tracking progress month over month. The improvement was measurable, quantifiable, and repeatable.

This is the power of objective feedback. It keeps you honest. It keeps you focused. It gives you clarity about where you are and where you need to go.

The Accountability Advantage

When people see objective data—whether it's tracking steps, monitoring sleep, or analyzing sales metrics—it impacts their behavior. This isn't about negative accountability or pressure. It's about creating clarity and maintaining focus.

In high-performance sport, this clarity is the difference between hoping you're improving and knowing you're improving. It's the difference between trusting the process blindly and trusting it because you can see it working.

The Bottom Line

After ten years of working with high-performance teams, we've learned that the fundamental truth hasn't changed:

You can't manage what you can't measure.

But we've also learned something more profound: measurement doesn't just help you manage performance—it helps you transform it.

The question isn't whether you should measure your performance. The question is whether you can afford not to.

Because somewhere out there, your competitors are looking at their numbers. They're identifying their weaknesses. They're tracking their progress. They're raising the bar.

And they're jumping over it.