What are we really doing while we wait to “notch a point,” and does the point even matter?
From ledgers to Balanced Scorecards
Score-keeping has been a part of commerce since the days of clay tablets, but the modern business “scorecard” traces its roots to the early 1990s, when Robert Kaplan and David Norton published The Balanced Scorecard model. Their idea was simple yet radical: combine financial measures with customer, internal process, and learning metrics to give leaders a rounded view of performance.
By the mid-2000s, most Fortune 500 firms had some form of scorecard. Consulting firms packaged them, software vendors automated them, and regulators warmed to the promise of “evidence-based management.” The trouble is that few organisations paused to ask why they were adding the metric and how it would shape behaviour. The result: a powerful tool used in many places as a blunt instrument.
Scorecards Have Morphed in the Digital Age
Cloud analytics and tools like Google’s Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) made it possible to cascade targets to thousands of employees in real-time. At Google, for instance, teams still celebrate hitting only ~70% of an OKR because stretch is designed into the system.
Yet volume and speed amplify risk. When data refreshes every hour, managers feel pressure to act every hour. Instead of guiding strategy, the scorecard becomes an always-on referee, whistle in hand. Workers learn to game the metrics, managers chase lagging indicators, and strategic reflection gets squeezed out.
Flaws Hidden in Plain Sight
- One-Dimensional View. Metrics rarely show terrain, only distance.
- Data Integrity Gaps. Few firms audit how the numbers are compiled; errors get multiplied at scale.
- Perverse Incentives. Wells Fargo tied branch-level scorecards to aggressive cross-sell targets; staff opened millions of fake accounts to hit quota, triggering US$185 million in fines in 2016.
- Invisible Externalities. Amazon’s warehouse productivity scorecards track picks-per-hour but miss the injury rate that now exceeds industry average.
A Tale of Two Scorecards
On the golf course. Consider the humble golf scorecard – I say ‘humble’ because every time I’m on a golf course, I’m truly humbled. That scorecard lists the par for each hole. It tells you nothing about the swirling wind on the 12th, the hidden bunker behind the green, or whether you are nursing a stiff back. You step onto the tee armed with data (what’s par?) yet unprepared for context.
In retail banking. Wells Fargo’s frontline “Solutions Cards” ranked staff daily on new accounts opened. The metric ignored customer need, product suitability, or long-term trust. Much like a golfer playing to the card, employees learned to swing at any pitch that moved the number—even if it hurt the course.
Models of Scorecards That Do Inform
| Tool | Core Question | When It Helps |
| Balanced Scorecard | “Are we balancing financial health with customer value, process excellence and learning?” | Annual or quarterly strategy reviews where you must track both leading and lagging indicators. |
| OKRs | “What must we achieve this quarter, and how will we measure success?” | Fast-moving product, tech or innovation teams that need stretch and focus. |
Scorecard vs Dashboard: Spot the Difference
- Scorecard = periodic report card. It compares performance to target (e.g., hit 95% on-time delivery this month).
- Dashboard = live cockpit. It shows real-time status so operators can steer (today’s shipping backlog, system latency, safety alerts).
A good dashboard is like a GPS: it updates as conditions change. A good scorecard is like a topographic map: it explains why the route matters in live time.
Designing a Scorecard That Adds – Not Destroys – Value
- Start with purpose. Tie each metric to a strategic question: “If this moves, do we care?”
- Blend context. Mix outcome (revenue) and capacity (people, risk, resilience) metrics so the path, not just the destination, is visible.
- Audit the math. Treat data lineage like financial controls; certify sources quarterly.
- Test for gaming. Ask “How could someone hit this number and still harm the business?” Adjust weighting.
- Limit the list. Kaplan & Norton recommended 15 to 20 KPIs. Many firms run 60+. More lines rarely equal more insight.
- Refresh relevance. Markets shift; your scorecard must too. Review at least annually, killing vanity metrics that outlived their usefulness.
- Tell the story. Pair numbers with narrative so leaders grasp nuance. A dip in sales might be strategic if it frees capacity for a higher-margin segment.
The Metaphor of “Keeping Score”
- Promotions and pay raises are corporate score-keeping. They measure visible outcomes (title, salary), not the years of uncredited groundwork—mentoring, relationship-building, and quiet problem-solving—that made promotion possible.
- “Over-night” celebrity is the entertainment industry’s version. The “score” (followers, streams, box-office) masks a decade of tiny gigs and rejected scripts.
Both remind us that a number alone rarely captures the journey that produced it.
So, What Are We Doing Until We Score?
We are building capability, managing uncertainty, and navigating the terrain—the very things most scorecards omit. The question every leadership team should ask is:
“Does our scorecard track the climb, or only the summit?”
If it is only the summit, productivity will suffer because people work to the card, not the company’s true purpose. When the card becomes the game, the game is already lost.
Final Thought
Scorecards are neither saints nor villains; they are mirrors. A warped mirror distorts what matters and invites destructive behaviour. A well-ground lens lets you see the whole course – the hills, the wind, the hazards and choose the right club for the shot ahead.
But there is a deeper risk: when a scorecard tracks only the destination, it erases the traveller. If our metrics ignore the learning curves, lateral moves, and quiet innovations that drive long-term advantage, then the organisation loses sight of where its true talent lives.
And if we persist with scorecards that only reward what’s easy to measure, how will we ever recognize the individuals whose unseen contributions steadily raise the value of the business? Promotions, pay, and recognition will go to the visible “points,” not the people creating the conditions for those points to be scored. Talent will be misjudged, misused or lost altogether.
Craft scorecards that illuminate the journey as well as the summit, and you not only steer performance – you discover, nurture, and retain the very talent that multiplies your firm’s value year after year.
If this has you thinking about how you’re scoring for success in your business, let’s talk about what gaps you want to close and how you want to change your results.
