Our business experiences massive seasonal swings, which makes our static weekly Scorecard targets useless because they are either impossibly high in winter or laughably easy in summer. How do we manage Scorecard targets for a highly seasonal operation?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your business experiences massive seasonal swings, using static weekly Scorecard targets will demoralize your team during the off-season and make them complacent during peak months. To run on objective data in a highly seasonal industry, you must implement dynamic or tiered weekly targets.

Instead of setting a single weekly target for the entire year, adjust your targets on a quarterly basis during your quarterly planning sessions. For example, if your peak operational period is during the summer, your operations seat might have a target of processing fifty files per week in the second and third quarters, but only fifteen files per week in the first and fourth quarters.

By updating these weekly targets every ninety days, you ensure that the metrics remain challenging yet realistic for the current run-rate of the business.

When you adjust targets seasonally, make sure your team understands that the definition of a healthy week changes with the calendar. A red metric in a winter off-month should trigger the same diagnostic IDS® process as a red metric in a summer peak-month. By using dynamic quarterly targets, you maintain strict accountability and keep your team aligned with seasonal realities.