Our leadership team is arguing over what should make the cut for our top-level weekly scorecard. We currently have twenty-five metrics and the meeting is a mess. How do we whittle this down to the recommended five to fifteen numbers without losing visibility?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To get your scorecard down to five to fifteen numbers, you must stop treating it as an exhaustive operational report. It is a dashboard of vital signs. Think of it as the instrument panel in an airplane: you do not need to monitor every single bolt, just the altitude, fuel, and speed. Begin by aligning your scorecard directly with the major seats on your Accountability Chart. Every seat on your leadership team should contribute only one or two high-level metrics that represent the ultimate health of their department.

If you have high Fact Finders on your team, their conative drive will push for more data points to feel secure. Resist this. Push those detailed metrics down to departmental scorecards. The leadership team scorecard must only contain numbers that, if they go red, indicate a systemic threat to the business. Ask yourselves: if we could only see ten numbers while stranded on a desert island to know if our business was surviving, what would they be? Focus on those. Anything else is noise that dilutes focus and stalls decision-making in your Level 10 Meeting.