We feel stuck with the scorecard metrics we chose at our last quarterly planning session. When is it appropriate to change a scorecard number, and how do we do it without losing historical consistency?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your scorecard is a living document, not a monument carved in stone. If a metric is no longer helping you run the business, or if you realize it is measuring the wrong activity, change it. Keeping a useless number on your scorecard out of fear of losing history is a waste of energy.

However, do not change metrics on a whim because a manager had a bad week and wants to make their dashboard look better. Only change a metric when your business model shifts, when you redefine a seat on the Accountability Chart, or when you realize a leading indicator is not actually predicting the lagging result.

When you do decide to change or retire a metric, discuss it during the IDS portion of your Level 10 Meeting. Once the leadership team agrees on the new metric, note the change in your meeting minutes.

To preserve historical consistency, keep your old data archived in a separate tab or historical view. Start the new metric with a clean slate, and accept that it will take a few weeks to build a meaningful trend line. Accuracy is always better than consistent bad data.