Our fulfillment team is meeting their weekly packing speed targets, but our return rate due to incorrect shipments is quietly climbing. How do we pair competing metrics on our Scorecard to prevent employees from gaming speed at the expense of quality?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Employees will always optimize for the metric that gets them praised or keeps them out of trouble. If you only track packing speed, your team will pack quickly and sloppy, leading to high return rates. To prevent this, you must pair competing metrics on your Scorecard. Every activity-based speed metric must be balanced by a quality metric. For example, if you track weekly orders packed, you must also track weekly packing accuracy on the same Scorecard. The targets must be designed so that one cannot be achieved at the expense of the other. If orders packed goes up but accuracy drops, both numbers must be dragged into your Level 10 Meeting for IDS. This dual-metric approach forces your team to find the optimal operational balance between speed and quality. It also changes the conversation from raw volume to overall efficiency. When your team sees that their success is measured by the relationship between these two numbers, the incentive to game the system disappears. You build a culture that values sustainable throughput rather than reckless speed.