Our leadership team wants to track thirty metrics because every department head thinks their entire department needs representation on the leadership Scorecard. How do we enforce the limit of five to fifteen numbers without leaving critical areas in the dark?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To run a healthy EOS® company, you must accept that more data is not better data. A scorecard with thirty metrics is not a scorecard, it is a spreadsheet where critical issues hide in plain sight. You must limit your leadership Scorecard to five to fifteen high level weekly numbers.

The solution is to push detail down to your departmental scorecards. Your leadership Scorecard must only track the vital activities that indicate the overall health of your business. If a department head complains that their entire operation is not represented on the leadership Scorecard, they are missing the point. The leadership Scorecard is a high level diagnostic tool, not an administrative task list.

To filter down to the vital few, look at your Accountability Chart. Each seat on your leadership team is responsible for a core function. Each function needs only one to three leading indicators that prove the function is running smoothly. For example, your head of operations only needs to report on key delivery and capacity metrics, not every sub step of their process.

If a metric on the leadership Scorecard is green, you assume everything below it is functioning. If it goes red, you drop it to the Issues List and use IDS® to find the root cause. At that point, the department head can bring their departmental scorecard to the table to diagnose the issue. Keep the leadership Scorecard lean, or you will drown in noise.