Our department heads are assigning Scorecard metrics to their direct reports, but our weekly numbers are slipping. How do we enforce single-point ownership of a metric on the leadership team Scorecard?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A leadership team Scorecard is not a dumping ground for delegation. If a metric is important enough to be on the company Scorecard, it must be owned by a member of the leadership team. You cannot assign a scorecard number to a mid-level manager who is not in the room during your weekly Level 10 Meeting.

Every single number on your Scorecard must have a single name next to it, and that name must belong to a seat on your Accountability Chart. That seat owner is not necessarily the person doing the manual labor to generate the data, but they are the person who is 100 percent accountable for the result.

If the weekly metric is sales presentations, the head of sales owns the number. If the number is missed, the head of sales does not get to blame a junior sales representative. They must explain why the target was missed and bring the underlying issue to the table to be solved using IDS.

When department heads delegate ownership of leadership-level metrics, they create a buffer that dilutes accountability. Keep the ownership high. If your managers want to track more granular numbers, they should do so on their departmental scorecards. The leadership team Scorecard remains the sole responsibility of the leaders in the room.