What happens when you start implementing weekly scorecards to an organization…
Whenever I’m in an organization that didn’t really have too much tracking and then we start a weekly scorecard with metrics for tracking, here’s what generally happens…
Phase 1: Pushback
Any time something like this is rolled out the team is naturally going to resist. People are used to doing things a certain way and now you're adding an extra thing they have to do every week. To make it all worse, it seems like there's no point in this added step they have to complete.
You'll often hear: I'm doing my job, so why do I have to check the box? This step makes no sense it adds no value
The Leader's Role
As a leader, you have to hold your ground and fight through this phase. Your only goal is to make it as simple as possible at this point so people at least start doing a little bit.
It's important to explain the why behind the change to your team as no one likes to change their routine for no reason. And "because I said so" is a surefire way to make sure your team starts looking for other opportunities.
The Employee's Role
As an employee if you feel the leader is making an unreasonable request, you have to speak up and explain why you think it's unreasonable. Oftentimes the leader may not be involved in the ground reality enough to make the right decisions.
In our desi culture it can often be seen as a bad thing to stand up to authority, but in American corporate culture the opposite is often true. You'll see people that are willing to stand up and speak their mind often are the ones that are moving up quickly. The ideal scenario is a balance between both extremes. Respect for authority while having the confidence to speak up when need be.
Phase 2: Surface Level Adoption
Surface level adoption happens when the team realizes the leader is not budging. He's (or she’s) going to stick to this method and we have to at least make it look like we're playing our part.
What you'll find in this phase is that everyone starts checking all the boxes that their boss wants to see at the end of the week. They'll do what they have to do in order to not get called out by their boss.
What drives the team at this point to complete the actions is not the actual results and goals that the boss laid out for them, but merely to comply with what the boss said to do.
In this phase you'll see green for the actions, but without the results you were expecting. That's because the team isn't bought into the goals, they're just checking the boxes.
The Leader's Role
At this phase in the process, the leader has to challenge the team's thinking around the actions and what they're doing. You must ask questions like: why are we not seeing the results we were expecting with this action? What are we doing differently based on what we saw last week? What's the root cause of missing our goal for this week?
A very useful tool for leaders to use while discussing with their teams is the 5 Whys Method. Keep pushing deeper and deeper to really understand the root cause of the problem. When you understand what is causing something, you can easily find actions to fix the problem.
The Employee's Role
As an employee in this phase, this is where you have the ability to really stand out. You must fight the urge to simply treat your responsibilities as homework that you're doing last minute the night before just to get some credit. You really have to take ownership and think deeply about what the goals are and how you can get to those goals.
What the leaders are looking for at this stage is not that you are absolutely knocking it out the park every single week. The leaders want to see people that are thinking through the problems and trying new things without them having to chase the employees down.
Phase 3: Ownership, Accountability, and Progress
If you can make it through phase 1 and 2, then this is the promised land. As a leader, this is where you now feel comfortable walking away from the operation knowing that the business will continue to move forward and improve without you.
What this looks like is that each person that is responsible for a certain metric or goal is thinking through how to get to that goal and trying new things to get there. They're not merely checking the boxes. In fact, at this stage you can almost get rid of the boxes.
At this point what usually ends up happening is the boxes become replaced with weekly reports where the people recap what's going on in their line of business: the numbers, the narratives, and what the plan is for the following weeks.
This is where business gets fun. This is where it's no longer about turning in your homework for some credit, but about recognizing that this is all a game and trying to play to win.
When you have a team of people that are at this level, that's when the real strides are made.
In almost all my roles I’ve had some form of a weekly recap report. In the ideal state, every team leader would have their own weekly recap email where everyone could quickly see how each department is doing and what steps they're taking to move the business forward.
The Leader's Role
This is where the leader has to step back and let the employee take the lead. In this phase, the employee becomes the leader.
The Employee's Role
To keep thinking big and taking action. Now it's your turn to develop other leaders to the same level you're at.