Is our scorecard serving business needs of the moment? Scorecards are widely debated within organizations and what I have found is that scorecards end up reflecting personalities rather than business imperatives. We argue and sell the concept of a consistent set of metrics and a standard format, so business can be monitored and decisions can be made. But, I have found that the theory of standard format and set metrics only says that “I don’t want to rake my brain on a frequent basis and make decisions dynamically.” There are a very few businesses that do not pose a new challenge every day – some days we are fixing what is broken, on the others, we may be finding ways to optimize the operations, yet another, we may be trying to find new ways to grow the business. So, why should the scorecard always look the same?
There are ways, a lot of managers pretend to get by that problem – add more metrics to the scorecard, make the font small to fit on one-page (often as a result of the former), etc. But, do they solve the tactical business challenges that are discussed in the review meetings every day/week/month? A better approach would be to identify what metrics are meant to be the health indicators of the business and what metrics need to be monitored for making tactical decisions by pointing out wins/challenges. To achieve this, we need scorecards that are not repetitive indicators of our performance, instead can dynamically capture the data points that help executives hone-in on the issue and make a call quickly during the review meetings.
I am not suggesting we dump the old formatted view of our metrics, but instead, we create one that speaks to our most current challenge (today, this week, etc.) – which retail department is moving ahead and which is hurting, which promotions worked for us, how do we help our dealers and vendors be more successful, what helps the consumer buying decision, how do we grow revenue to meet this months targets, etc. This slight change can help surface underlying issue, as for example; With stagnant sales – increasing the share of consumer’s wallet is tough in these times, but bringing more consumers in through the door is still a viable growth strategy. If we can dynamically demonstrate the value of our key projects through the right scorecard, it might be just that much easier to gain executive approval and show the results as they come in.
