We are building our EOS Scorecard from scratch and our leadership team cannot agree on what makes the cut into our core 5 to 15 numbers. How do we objectively choose our initial metrics without getting bogged down in departmental wishlists?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Start by looking at the pulse of your entire business through four basic lenses: customer acquisition, service or product delivery, customer satisfaction, and cash. Every operating business survives on these four engines. When leadership teams get stuck debating thirty possible metrics, it is usually because department heads are trying to prove their daily activity matters rather than measuring whether the business engine is running smoothly.

To cut through personal preferences, ask this question: If you were stranded on a remote island with no phone, no email, and only a single piece of paper with 5 to 15 numbers faxed to you once a week, what numbers would tell you the exact operational health of your company?

Run each nominated number through three strict qualification filters:
- Is it weekly and actionable? If you cannot influence it next week through team behavior, it does not belong here.
- Is it activity-based? Measure inputs like proposals delivered or project milestones signed off rather than closed revenue.
- Does it have clear single-point ownership? Exactly one seat on your Accountability Chart must own it.

Pick your best 8 to 10 numbers to start. Do not obsess over perfection on day one. Run them for thirty to sixty days in your Level 10 Meeting™. Patterns will emerge quickly. You will find that three numbers tell you nothing useful, while one critical operational bottleneck was missing entirely. Swap them out at your next quarterly planning session. A great Scorecard is refined through weekly discipline, not theoretical debate.