Our leadership team argues that our weekly Scorecard metrics are too lagging to help us make real-time operational decisions. How do we identify and track true leading indicators that give us a forward-looking view of our business?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your weekly Scorecard is filled with metrics like closed revenue, client retention, and monthly profit, you are looking in the rearview mirror. Lagging indicators only tell you what has already happened, which is too late for your leadership team to take corrective action during your weekly Level 10 Meeting™. To build a truly predictive Scorecard, you must identify and track leading indicators.

Leading indicators measure the activities that directly produce your lagging results. To find these metrics, look at the key drivers of your business processes.

- Instead of tracking closed revenue, track the number of outbound sales calls made or meetings scheduled this week.
- Instead of tracking client satisfaction, track the response times for support tickets or the percentage of project milestones met on schedule.
- Instead of tracking overall profitability, track weekly billable hours or material utilization rates.

Every leading metric on your Scorecard must have a clear weekly target and a single owner from your Accountability Chart™ who is responsible for that number. When a leading indicator falls short of its target, it serves as an early warning system. It allows your leadership team to identify and solve the underlying problem through IDS® before it impacts your bottom line. Transitioning your Scorecard to eighty percent leading indicators gives you the foresight to manage your business proactively rather than reactively.