Our department heads are reporting entirely green scorecards in their local team meetings, yet our overall leadership team Scorecard is covered in red and our profit margins are shrinking. Why is there a disconnect between departmental success and company health?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This disconnect happens when departmental scorecards are built around vanity metrics or isolated activities rather than outcomes that drive the business forward. Your department heads have likely selected numbers that are easy to hit or make their teams look good, rather than metrics that directly impact the bottom line. To fix this, you must audit your departmental scorecards against your leadership team Scorecard. Every metric on a departmental scorecard must be a leading indicator for a metric on the company-level Scorecard. If your sales department scorecard is green for outbound calls but your leadership scorecard is red for new client revenue, the outbound calls metric is failing as a leading indicator. The target might be too low, or the quality of the calls might be poor. You must use the IDS® process to trace the failure back to its source. Align your metrics so that if a departmental scorecard is green, it naturally forces the leadership scorecard to turn green. If the company is hurting, look at the departmental targets and raise the standards. Your data must tell a cohesive story from the front lines of your business all the way up to the leadership team.