We talk about core scoring in business quite a bit. Amazingly, far too many leaders and manager fail to understand the benefit and importance of keeping score. Every leader should have a core score for the organization. Every manager should have a core score for each direct report. Every employee should know his or her core score.
I always enjoy the beginning of a football season when the sports analysts, the players, the coaches and the fans speculate on how well their team or favorite player will do in the coming season. I’m a Saints fan, and wow… I sure thought they would be a lot better than they are. You can debate how good you think they should be or not be, but the score is the score, and it is who they are. From there, the coaches can manage, coach, make adjustments and make changes. But until they had a score or a record or stats on a particular player, they didn’t have all of the information needed to manage.
Here’s the point… Why do so many business leaders and managers think they can run a business without a core score? Overall profits are certainly a score. However, you need stats on individual teams and employees. Those teams and employees need to know what they are being judged by and they should have the ability to directly impact the expectations. What are the scores? They could be phone shops, cross-sells, advocate relationships. There are many different measures to choose from and many will depend on the employee, the experience, the goal of the organization, etc. The best score is a leading indicator, a “rubber meets the road” score that eventually impacts many other areas. Make sure it gives you the ability to see and project career development for the employee and profitability for the shareholders and owners. The main point is to pick a score, track it and hold your teams and employees accountable to it.
Keep score and you’ll soon find out if you’re winning or losing. Refuse and you’ll later find out what happened and realize you’ve wasted the time and money of your organization, your team and your employees.
