Our business experiences massive seasonal demand fluctuations, which makes setting static weekly scorecard targets highly frustrating for our team. How do we handle scorecard targets for a highly seasonal business without constantly moving the goalposts?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Static scorecard targets do not work for seasonal businesses. If you set a flat weekly target based on annual averages, your team will easily crush their targets during peak season and constantly fail during the slow season. This destroys morale and renders the scorecard useless.

To solve this, you must build dynamic, seasonal targets while maintaining strict scorecard discipline.

Use this process to manage seasonality on your weekly scorecard:
- Look at historical trends: Analyze the past three years of weekly data to map out your high, medium, and low volume weeks.
- Establish seasonal brackets: Group your year into distinct operational seasons, such as peak, transitional, and maintenance.
- Set tiered targets: Create different targets for each season on your master scorecard sheet. For example, your target for sales calls might be fifty per week in the spring, but only fifteen per week in the winter.
- Lock the schedule: Do not change targets on the fly. Agree on the seasonal schedule and target tiers during your annual planning session or quarterly meetings.

By establishing these tiered targets, your team always knows what winning looks like for that specific week. A red number in a slow week still means there is a problem, and a green number in a busy week means the team is executing correctly. This preserves the integrity of your data while keeping your team focused on realistic, high impact activities.