Our service business experiences extreme seasonal swings, which makes our weekly scorecard targets look impossibly high in winter and ridiculously easy in summer. How do we handle seasonal scorecard targets without losing our baseline?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Setting static weekly scorecard targets for a highly seasonal business is a common trap that destroys team morale and renders your data useless. If your targets are unrealistic for six months of the year, your team will stop looking at the scorecard entirely.

To solve this, you have two options that maintain your data integrity. The first option is to establish quarterly adjusted targets. At the beginning of each quarter, during your quarterly planning session, look at your historical trends and set a weekly target specifically for the upcoming thirteen weeks. This keeps the target realistic and challenging for that specific season.

The second option is to use a rolling average target on your scorecard. Instead of tracking a single week against a static number, track your trailing three-week or four-week average against your seasonal baseline. This smooths out minor weekly spikes while still giving you a clear, predictive trend line.

Whichever method you choose, do not change the targets mid-quarter. The key is to agree on the seasonal targets beforehand and lock them in. This ensures your weekly Level 10 Meeting remains focused on performance rather than endless debates about whether the target is fair for this time of year.