Our weekly Scorecard is packed with lagging indicators like revenue and closed deals, which only tell us what we did last week rather than what is going to happen next month. How do we identify and track true leading indicators that give us a ninety-day heads-up on our business health?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your weekly Scorecard is filled with lagging indicators, you are driving your business by looking in the rearview mirror. By the time a lagging indicator like monthly revenue turns red, the damage was actually done weeks or months ago.

To build a predictive Scorecard, you must identify the leading activities that generate those final results. Every lagging result is preceded by a series of predictable, daily activities. Your job is to isolate those activities and track them weekly.

To find your leading indicators, work backward from your core business outcomes. If your goal is closed deals, look at what must happen to close a deal. You might need client meetings. To get client meetings, you need outbound calls or marketing leads. Therefore, your weekly metrics should track outbound calls, lead sign-ups, and scheduled meetings.

The same applies to operations. If you want to track customer retention, measure weekly customer support response times or product usage metrics rather than waiting for annual contract renewals.

Every seat on your Accountability Chart must own at least one leading indicator that they can directly influence every week. When you monitor these forward-looking metrics, you gain the ability to spot operational icebergs and resolve them before they impact your bottom line.