Our business experiences extreme seasonal swings where winter volume is triple our summer volume. How do we set meaningful weekly Scorecard goals when a static single target makes half our year artificially red and the other half artificially green?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A weekly Scorecard goal should never be a static twelve-month average if your business operates on extreme seasonal cycles. Setting a flat annual weekly target in a seasonal business renders the Scorecard useless: your team gets complacent during peak months because every metric is effortlessly green, and they get demoralized during trough months because every metric is hopelessly red regardless of their effort.

In EOS, Scorecard targets are set and adjusted on a quarterly basis during your Quarterly Planning session. Your weekly numbers must reflect the specific operating reality of the upcoming thirteen weeks.

To handle severe seasonality, implement one of two structures:
- Quarterly adjusted targets: Break your annual budget into quarterly milestones based on historical seasonality. If your second quarter represents only fifteen percent of your annual volume, set your weekly targets to match that specific quarterly plan. A green cell in July must represent excellent performance for July, not parity with December.
- Trailing run rates or percentage-to-seasonal-budget: Instead of tracking raw units, track actual weekly production against the seasonally adjusted weekly target as a percentage, with one hundred percent as the goal. Alternatively, use a trailing four-week moving average to smooth out erratic weekly spikes.

The Scorecard exists to provide an honest, objective pulse of whether the business is winning or losing right now. If your targets ignore known seasonal realities, your numbers produce emotional noise instead of operational clarity. Adjust the numbers every ninety days so red always means an issue that requires IDS.