Our leadership team is arguing over what metrics should go on our weekly Scorecard. Everyone wants to track their own pet projects, and we now have thirty rows of data that we cannot digest. How do we narrow this down to the vital few?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A healthy weekly Scorecard should have between five and fifteen high-level, activity-based numbers. If you have thirty rows of data, you are not running a Scorecard; you are looking at an operations report.

To clean this up, you must focus exclusively on leading indicators. A leading indicator measures an activity that predicts a future result. For example, outbound sales calls is a leading indicator; closed revenue is a lagging indicator.

To narrow down your list, ask this question: If we were on a desert island with only a phone and could only look at ten numbers to know if our business was healthy, what would those numbers be?

Go row by row through your current thirty metrics. If a metric does not directly predict the health of a core function of the business, delete it from the leadership team Scorecard. It can still be tracked at the departmental level, but it does not belong on the executive dashboard.

Each number must have a clear target and a single owner on the Accountability Chart who is responsible for hitting that target. If a number goes red, it drops to the Issues List for IDS®. By reducing the noise, your leadership team will gain immediate clarity on where the business is heading.