Our leadership team is addicted to reviewing last month's profit and loss statement during our meetings, which feels like driving a car by only looking in the rearview mirror. How do we shift their focus to weekly leading indicators?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Reviewing last month's financial statements during your weekly meetings is a useless exercise for driving real time performance. By the time you see a dip in revenue on a profit and loss statement, the damage was actually done six to eight weeks earlier. You cannot fix the past.

To break this habit, you must teach your leadership team the difference between lagging results and leading indicators. Your weekly scorecard is designed to predict the future, not report history.

Start by identifying the activities that generate your revenue and profit. For example, instead of tracking monthly revenue, track weekly billable hours delivered, sales meetings completed, or client proposals submitted. If those leading indicators are green, your future revenue will take care of itself.

Next, strictly ban the review of historical financial statements during the scorecard portion of your Level 10 Meeting. The scorecard review must take no more than five minutes. If a leader tries to explain a weekly number by pulling up a monthly financial report, shut the conversation down. Force them to focus on whether the weekly target was met.

If a weekly leading indicator is red, drop it to the issues list. Use IDS to find the root cause of the activity failure today. By focusing on the weekly actions that your team can actually control, you will naturally stop obsessing over past financial outcomes and start proactively managing your business performance.