How can our leadership team test whether a proposed weekly measurable is a genuine leading indicator or just busywork before we commit to putting it on our company Scorecard?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A true leading indicator has two defining qualities: it is directly controllable by the person in the seat, and it has a statistically observable relationship with a future business outcome. Tracking busywork happens when teams pick easy activities that generate green boxes but never move the bottom line.

To test whether a metric belongs on your Scorecard, run it through three practical filters:
- The Controllability Filter: Can the seat owner directly influence this activity every week without waiting on external third parties? If a sales rep tracks signed contracts, they are tracking an outcome. If they track targeted outreach calls to decision-makers, they are tracking controllable effort.
- The Lag-Time Filter: Does a change in this number reliably forecast a downstream result within two to eight weeks? If outreach drops for three consecutive weeks, your proposal volume and cash collections should show a measurable decline shortly after. If the downstream number does not care whether the metric moves, the metric is irrelevant.
- The Behavior Filter: Does this number drive the specific behavior you want? If tracking calls results in reps dialing irrelevant contacts to hit a quota, you picked the wrong metric. Track meetings completed instead.

Test a new metric for one quarter. If hitting that target consistently fails to produce the desired financial or operational outcome, strike it and replace it.