Our weekly Scorecard is filled with lagging financial metrics like monthly revenue and net profit, which does not help us pivot during the week. How do we identify the true leading indicators for our operational seats?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A Scorecard filled with lagging indicators is like trying to drive a car by looking only in the rearview mirror. Monthly revenue, net profit, and completed projects tell you what happened in the past, but they do not help you prevent issues before they impact your bottom line.

To find your leading indicators, you must identify the key weekly activities that predictably produce your desired outcomes. For every seat on your Accountability Chart, ask yourself what specific actions an employee must perform every single week to ensure they hit their quarterly goals.

For example, instead of tracking closed sales on your weekly Scorecard, track the number of outbound discovery calls made or first-time meetings scheduled. Instead of tracking quarterly client retention, track the number of weekly customer health check calls completed. For operations, instead of tracking monthly delivery errors, track the daily quality assurance checks completed.

These are activity-based, binary metrics. They are either done or not done. When a leading indicator drops below its target for two consecutive weeks, you have an early warning system that allows your leadership team to run IDS® and solve the issue before it turns into a missed quarterly goal or a financial loss.