One specific department on our Accountability Chart is consistently failing to meet its goals, but their departmental scorecard is always green. How do we audit their local scorecard to find the disconnect between their daily activities and our leadership team's expectations?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a department has a green scorecard but is failing to deliver on its overall goals, you have a classic alignment issue. This usually happens because the department is tracking easy activities rather than the hard leading indicators that actually drive results. To fix this, the Integrator and the department head must audit the local scorecard together. Start by looking at the department seat on the Accountability Chart and review their core roles. Every metric on their departmental scorecard must directly support one of those core roles. Next, look for optimization-hacking. Sometimes teams track metrics that are easy to keep green but do not translate to success. For example, a customer service team might track calls answered, which is always green because they answer quickly, but ignore first-contact resolution rates, which is where the actual service breakdown is occurring. Replace these superficial metrics with tough, activity-based leading indicators that have a direct correlation to your high-level business goals. Every metric must be a true predictor of success. Once you realign the department scorecard with their core accountabilities, the numbers will accurately reflect the health of their department.