Tips for Setting Scorecard Measurables [Agreements vs. Expectations]

Your Scorecard will always be a work in progress, and that’s a good thing! Digging deeper to learn where you can push forward or where you need to pull back is a sign that you care about your team and are showing good leadership. It all starts with a strong Scorecard that illuminates strengths and weaknesses, providing an avenue to implement changes or address issues. Keep your Scorecards up to date with Ninety.

When you have multiple people in one seat on your Roles and Responsibilities chart, it becomes even more important to have clear measurables to manage their performance. Ninety’s Founder, Mark Abbott, shares advice he provides to clients when establishing best practices for measurables and performance tracking:

• Everyone in the seat must have the same measurables.
• The Manager and the Team Member need to set and agree on target(s) below which they both know there is an issue. Essentially, set the bottom line regarding what is acceptable each week.
• Then, when the numbers aren’t hit, they get added to the Issues list.
• Thus, everyone might have a different minimum target but will have the same measurable.

By following these tips for building out your Scorecard, you can track performance by an individual to monitor growth or build in support and training if a measurable lands on the Issues list more than once.

The key to success here is establishing your measurable targets as agreements, not expectations. When there is an agreement in place and not lived up to, there are no surprises, and it’s time to talk about what happened and implement plans for change and improvement.

These types of agreements versus expectations offer more than just an opportunity to get the Scorecard right, as they establish an open line of communication, transparency, and trust between the Manager and Team Member. When people have agreements, they commit themselves and the other party to live up to what they promised. This small difference in your leadership approach can hugely impact buy-in, sense of empowerment, and ownership for your people. All of that directly translates to how hard your people work and how hard they want to work.

Try it out with your measurables in Ninety, and see where else you can apply the concept. Start your free 30-day-trial of Ninety!