Our leadership team still relies on gut feelings and emotional arguments during our weekly Level 10 Meeting instead of looking at the hard numbers. How do we force a cultural shift so that every decision, hire, and process change is driven solely by our weekly scorecard data?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To build an organization that runs on data, you must stop allowing emotional arguments to guide your business decisions. This shift starts at the top, specifically during the IDS® portion of your weekly Level 10 Meeting™.

Whenever a leadership team member raises an issue based on a feeling or an anecdote, your immediate response must be to ask for the data. If a manager says their team is completely overwhelmed, do not authorize a new hire based on that complaint. Instead, look at their department scorecard. If the capacity and utilization metrics do not support their claim, table the request until they can present objective data to prove the need.

Living by data requires discipline. You must cultivate a culture where opinions are treated as hypotheses until they are backed by numbers. When your team realizes that they cannot get projects approved, budgets increased, or hires authorized without supporting data from the scorecard, their behavior will change. They will start managing their departments by the numbers, leading to a much more predictable and valuable business.