Does everyone on your team have a goal they need to accomplish to help move the business forward? Are you tracking what is getting done?
You have probably heard about having a Scorecard, a pulse report, or KPIs. Many centers have goals. Various teams work on projects throughout the year, and no one measures anything. Everyone waits until the P&L comes out at the end of the quarter to see how things went and can’t figure out why they didn’t grow.
Scorecards are a way for us to focus on what’s most important to move our business forward and have a clear understanding of how we are doing. Remember, you have to inspect what you expect. How do you expect to grow your business if you aren’t tracking what you are doing?
This week we wanted to answer a few questions about why you need a Scorecard and what goes in it.
What is a Scorecard?
A Scorecard is a quick view of the pulse of your business. Your Scorecard includes 13 weeks of data that will show patterns, create accountability and focus, and help you identify issues before they become problems. It also helps you predict short and long-term trends to identify opportunities and minimize complications.
Why do I need a Scorecard?
We all work hard to grow our businesses, so why wouldn’t we want to measure how we are doing and be able to predict our future? Scorecards give us the ability to measure what is occurring now and help us to be strategic about how to prepare for the future.
Provides Clear Communication
A Scorecard helps keep everyone on the team accountable and builds trust with one another through clarity. Imagine if, at the beginning of the year, each department created goals and initiatives on how they are going to grow the business and when you asked about their progress, their response was always, “Things are going great.” Vague answers do not help move the company forward. Clear communication can help solve problems before they start. What if, at the end of the year, they didn’t complete what they said they would, and you missed your goal? Would everything feel great then?
Promotes Accountability
Expectations need to be clear from the get-go to hold people accountable. If the game room has a goal to clean a few games every week, the team doesn’t have clear expectations about what they are supposed to do. But if we say, “Five games a week need to be detailed,” it’s easy to know what the expectation is and they can be held accountable for getting it done with no grey area.
Gets Results
When the desired results are clear, it’s easier to accomplish those results. When my team was working to reach $1 million in birthday sales, we had a board in the office that told us exactly how much we needed to do in sales over the weekend, with a clear goal of how much we needed to upsell to get there. Everyone on our team knew the goal and what it was going to take to get the results we wanted.
Seeing Issues Before It’s Too Late
A Scorecard can help see problems before they get too far. A line on the Scorecard may be the kitchen is accountable to do inventory every week, but for two weeks in a row, the inventory was not completed. You can see ahead of time there could be a problem and do what is necessary to avoid it. It’s easy to see when there is a clear goal associated with the task if there is an issue.
What goes on a Scorecard?
I wish this answer were simple. It varies for every company. Imagine you are stranded on an island, and you only had your Scorecard to assess how things are going with your business. What are the 5 to 15 activity items that need to be done weekly to move your business forward and produce the outcomes you want? These should be activities from sales, finance, and operations to ensure the health of your entire organization.
Remember what gets measured, gets done!
Doing this on your own isn’t easy. Join us next month for our two-day Business Coaching Conference in Arlington, TX and work with us and other business owners to develop your Scorecard, change the way you do business, and grow your business faster!
Click here for more information.
