As a project manager, virtual assistant, or agency owner, you should always be looking to improve your work and your client’s results. Luckily, there’s a simple blueprint to follow which guarantees success with enough iterations.
Not only that – but you can use the same blueprint for personal efficiency and decision making as a part of our 9 triangles framework.
It’s called MAA.
MAA stands for metrics, analysis, and action. MAA is a requirement to measure the success of your work and what needs to be done to ensure happy clients and a thriving business.
Each letter is instrumental, since without metrics we can’t have analysis, and without analysis we can’t have action.
In this article, we’ll go through each with examples, show you how to conduct weekly MAA cycles, and why it’s so important to do.
Metrics
We recently onboarded Star Heating & Cooling, an HVAC local service business in Fishers, IN. In the first week, we wanted to show MAA in action and how simply writing out our metrics can point us in the right direction for getting more calls in the door.
As you can see, we’ve had 19 booked calls this week. 13 from existing customers, 3 from our GMB, 2 from our website, and 1 from Facebook.
We can then move to analysis. What the metrics tell us is that GMB calls are the primary source for new client acquisition, even above LSA and PPC which are barely getting us any calls at all right now.
And since we’ve only received 3 new customers from GMB this week, we should prioritize getting PPC and LSA ads going for more call volume since their business qualifies for LSA and wasn’t already spending much before.
Therefore, the action for this week should be getting PPC and LSA set up and running for more inbound new customers.
MAA isn’t just for local service businesses, either. Take the example of a recent VA we’ve hired named Asifa. We’ve asked all of our new hires to reflect and write MAA about their performance so far.
Any full time content VA should be writing more than just 5 articles a day, which equals 1.5 hours per article. So understanding the results of work completed (metrics) means we can then move on to analysis.
Asifa’s analysis isn’t wrong per say, but what we’re also looking for is the reason for the existing metrics before we move on to action.
For example, “I wasn’t as familiar with our clients GCT, and therefore moved slower than I should have when writing these articles” is great, since it addresses the underlying concerns for why the metrics are what they are.
Once we understand the metrics and write an analysis of them, we can then move on to the action. In Asifa’s case, it was to understand more about our process through existing materials and complete more work.
What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get improved. Which is why the M in MAA is the center of everything else we discuss for analysis and action.
Analysis
The analysis section of MAA is what everyone gets confused on. Most project managers go from Metrics -> Action and skip this crucial step. But without it, the actual actions which need to be taken are vague.
For example, we recently had American Epoxy, a concrete coating company, reach out to us since they were disappointed with their agency. The lead quality most of these leads were coming from outside of Arizona. Since American Epoxy is based in Tucson, they were frustrated that they were getting form submissions from Texas and Florida.
In response, Dennis Yu and myself joined a call where the client manager acknowledged the out of state leads, and then went into the action they would take to address them.
But wait a moment, how would you know what action to take without analysis on why these leads were out of state?
This is like if you were on a boat taking in water in the middle. Sure, you could grab a bucket and start shoveling water… or you could simply plug in the hole where the water is coming from.
But without analysis, everything is a sinking ship and no-one knows where the water is coming in from.
Take the example of All About Pressure Cleaning, a client of ours in Pompano Beach, Florida. All About recently had a big influx of poor quality calls and folks in South Florida looking for jobs.
Since All About Pressure Cleaning does pressure cleaning and other related services, they were (rightfully) frustrated with folks calling them looking for maids and other unrelated services.
Knowing these metrics and the poor quality of them, here was my analysis.
You can see me addressing the obvious problem, why this problem has happened, and the solution, which is to start iterating more on Google PPC ads and remove PMAX campaigns.
But without proper analysis, I could have easily said “Okay, we’re working on it!” and tried a dozen other things. Instead, we got to the root cause and offered a solution based on the existing data.
We would not have found the solution had we not conducted proper analysis of our metrics.
Action
Tying MAA together, we have action. When done properly, this is the easiest step since the analysis leads to an obvious conclusion.
For example, if lead volume is low, we can see why that’s the case in analysis and take action based on it. Just like how if you’re bad at writing content and acknowledge the reason for that being your lack of experience, the answer is to clearly learn and do more.
Or if a client is mad about lack of communication, poor lead quality, or lack of lead volume. The solution is almost always visible once you conduct proper analysis.
You can almost view the action section as a to-do list for the following week before the next MAA cycle. Therefore, there’s always new metrics to iterate from and progress to be made, regardless of the situation.
Using AI the right way inside MAA
One of the most common questions we get is whether it’s okay to use AI when writing MAA reports and daily EOD updates. The answer is yes, but there’s a right way and a wrong way.
The right way is to use AI as an administrative assistant that helps you organize and present the actual work you’ve already done. You did the work. You ran the campaigns, wrote the articles, pulled the data, made the changes. AI helps you list out the most important, specific, meaningful changes so your team and your manager can see what happened without having to deploy their own agents to figure it out.
For example, if you spent the day editing six chapters of a book, fixing passive voice, rewriting two chapters from scratch, and resolving a screenshot issue, you can ask AI to help you summarize those changes clearly for your EOD report. That’s legitimate. You’re not asking AI to do the work. You’re asking it to help you communicate the work you did.
The wrong way is to use AI to generate vague assurances that sound productive but don’t point to any specific completed work. Statements like “made progress on the project” or “continued working on deliverables” are not MAA. They’re filler. And when someone has to go into the project thread to verify what actually happened, they often find that not much did.
This is the same principle behind the A in MAA. Action means something was done, not that something was discussed or planned. Your EOD and weekly MAA reports should reflect completed tasks with enough specificity that anyone reading them can verify the work without asking follow-up questions.
Think of it this way. If your manager has to ask “what exactly did you do?” after reading your update, the update failed. AI can help you make sure that doesn’t happen by pulling your scattered notes, commits, edits, and task completions into a clean summary. That’s AI making you more efficient at communication, not replacing the work itself.
The distinction matters because most people either avoid AI entirely (thinking we’re saying don’t use it) or abuse it by generating polished-sounding reports that mask a lack of real output. Neither is what we want. We want AI amplifying your real work, the same way MAA amplifies your real results.
Why is MAA so important?
Besides fitting into our 9 triangles framework, MAA is your universal compass for decision making. Even though we use it for client success, you can use it for personal efficiency, planning priorities, and making important life decisions.
If you care about making money as an agency owner, MAA can reduce your churn rate an enormous amount, since clients can clearly see progress being made and iteration taking place. The iteration and weekly cycles make it so things don’t get stuck either.
If you care about leveling up your skill set, MAA can make your priorities clear since you know your metrics and have analyzed why things are the way that they are.
If you care about building relationships, you can use MAA as a reason for why people act the way that they do and why.
In short – you can use MAA as your professional decision maker since there’s always logic and flow. As long as MAA is being completed, iteration is happening and we’re moving closer to our goals.
If you’d like to learn more, we have a whole course on how to do MAA, with even more examples and blueprints.