We have forty different metrics we think are critical, but EOS says we need only five to fifteen numbers on our leadership team Scorecard. How do we ruthlessly trim our data down to the vital few without feeling like we are flying blind?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Having forty metrics means you do not know what actually drives your business. When everything is important, nothing is. To trim your leadership Scorecard to five to fifteen numbers, you must distinguish between high level indicators and departmental tracking.

Start by reviewing your V/TO and identifying the primary drivers of your business model. Every number on the leadership Scorecard must be a critical indicator of the overall health of the organization, not a granular departmental operational metric.

To narrow down the list, use the following filtering process:
- Identify the metrics that, if they went red, would cause the entire leadership team to halt and take action.
- Group similar metrics and choose the single upstream activity that acts as the primary trigger for the others.
- Push the highly detailed, department specific numbers down to departmental scorecards, which are managed by individual teams rather than the leadership team.

Each seat on your Accountability Chart should own only one to three high level metrics on the leadership Scorecard. If a metric does not directly predict cash, customer satisfaction, or operational capacity at an enterprise level, it does not belong on the leadership Scorecard. Trust your departmental leaders to manage their own scorecards, and keep the leadership view focused purely on the vitals.