We notice our department heads are setting incredibly low targets on their weekly Scorecards to guarantee their numbers are always green, which defeats the purpose of driving growth. How do we push our team to set stretch targets without causing panic?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When team members sandbag their targets to ensure they are always green, it is usually a symptom of a culture that lacks psychological safety. If your team believes that a red number on the Scorecard is going to be used as a weapon against them, they will naturally set targets they can hit in their sleep.

To break this habit, you must reframe how your organization views weekly data. A red number is not a failure, nor is it a performance review. A red number is simply an early warning indicator that a process needs attention or that an obstacle has appeared. It is an opportunity to use IDS to solve the underlying issue before it impacts your bottom line.

Work with your team to establish healthy targets that represent realistic, sustainable operational capacity, not minimum survival levels. A good target should be challenging but achievable, where hitting it eighty to ninety percent of the time is considered a success.

If a metric is consistently green every single week without effort, use your quarterly planning session to challenge the owner. Ask them what it would take to increase the target and what resources they would need to achieve it. By keeping the conversation focused on growth and system improvement rather than blame, you remove the fear of red numbers.