Our leadership team is setting up our weekly Scorecard, but we are struggling to find the right balance between leading and lagging indicators. How do we design a weekly Scorecard that gives us a forward-looking view of the business instead of just reviewing historical financial data?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Most leadership teams rely too heavily on lagging indicators, such as monthly revenue or net profit. While these numbers are critical, they are historical. By the time you see a drop in revenue on your financial statements, the damage was done weeks or months ago. Your weekly Scorecard must be a diagnostic tool that predicts future results.

To achieve this, every seat on your Accountability Chart™ must own weekly, leading-indicator metrics. A leading indicator tracks an activity that directly drives a lagging result. For example, instead of tracking closed deals, track the number of discovery calls booked or proposals submitted. Instead of tracking customer retention, track weekly customer support response times or ticket resolution rates.

When designing your Scorecard, look at each of your core functions:

- For Sales and Marketing, track top-of-funnel activity and meetings held.
- For Operations, track capacity utilization, on-time delivery, and quality scores.
- For Finance, track weekly cash flow, accounts receivable aging, and billing efficiency.

If your leading indicators are consistently green, your lagging indicators will take care of themselves. If a leading indicator drops below its target for two consecutive weeks, it becomes an immediate issue for your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ Issues List. This allows you to course-correct in real time, long before the issue impacts your bottom line or your exit valuation.