Our leadership team is constantly debating how to set realistic targets for our weekly Scorecard. Some leaders set easy targets they always hit, while others set impossible stretch goals that are always red. How do we establish a standard for setting scorecard targets?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Scorecard targets are not wishes, and they are not minimum safety nets. They must represent the healthy, baseline operational pace required to achieve your company's high-level goals.

When targets are set too low, they breed complacency and hide operational inefficiency. When they are set as impossible stretch goals, they demoralize your team and cause scorecard fatigue, leading everyone to ignore the red numbers. To find the sweet spot, your targets should be challenging yet consistently achievable eighty percent of the time under normal operating conditions.

To establish this standard, look at your historical data. If you do not have historical data, start by looking at what is mathematically required to hit your quarterly Rocks and annual budget. If your sales department needs to close four deals a week to hit your annual goal, then your weekly target for closed deals is four.

Once a target is set, keep it locked for at least one full quarter. If a department head argues that their target is too high, challenge them to prove it with data during your quarterly planning session. Do not allow them to lower a target just because they had a bad week. A red metric is simply an opportunity to IDS and improve your processes, not a reason to move the goalposts.