We are designing our weekly Scorecard but have ended up with over twenty-five metrics because every department head insists their data is critical. How do we pare this down to the vital few numbers that actually tell us if the business is on track?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A weekly Scorecard with twenty-five metrics is not a scorecard, it is a spreadsheet. When you track everything, you track nothing. The purpose of the Scorecard is to give the leadership team a pulse on the health of the business in just five minutes. It should consist of five to fifteen high level, forward looking activity metrics, not a massive list of backward looking financial results.

To pare your Scorecard down to the vital few, start by asking what weekly activities predict your future success. Do not list lagging indicators like monthly revenue or net profit. Instead, focus on leading indicators. For example, track the number of weekly sales calls, the number of support tickets resolved within twenty-four hours, or the percentage of project milestones hit on time.

Every single number on your Scorecard must have a single owner who is responsible for reporting it and hitting its weekly target. If a metric does not have a clear owner, remove it. If a metric does not trigger an immediate IDS discussion when it is red, it does not belong on the leadership team Scorecard.

Let your department heads track their detailed operational data on their own department scorecards. Your leadership team Scorecard must remain clean, highly focused, and easy to read at a glance. Start with a maximum of ten metrics. If you cannot run your business with those ten numbers, you do not understand your core operational drivers yet.