We suspect our sales and account management teams are gaming our weekly scorecard by shifting activities to hit their target numbers without generating real business value. How do we identify and audit gamed metrics to restore absolute integrity to our data?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When team members feel threatened by scorecard accountability, they will find ways to game the numbers to make their scorecard look green. This happens when you measure raw activities without measuring the quality or outcome of those activities.

To stop this behavior, you must pair your volume metrics with quality metrics on your scorecard. If your sales representatives are required to make fifty cold calls a week, they can easily dial random numbers to hit their target. To prevent this, pair calls made with a secondary metric like scheduled meetings or qualified opportunities. If calls are green but meetings are red, the activity is useless.

Another common area for gaming is customer support ticket resolution. Technicians might close tickets prematurely to meet their speed targets, only to have the client reopen them later. You can combat this by tracking the percentage of tickets reopened within forty eight hours.

When you spot a gamed metric, do not blame the employee. Use it as an opportunity to IDS® the metric itself during your weekly meeting. Ask if you are measuring the right activity or if the target is encouraging the wrong behavior.

A healthy scorecard is a tool for self correction, not a weapon for punishment. When your team trusts that red numbers are treated as problems to solve rather than reasons to fire, the temptation to game the data disappears.