The opening in the rock arch frames the view. A good scorecard should do the same. It shouldn’t show everything. It should focus attention on what matters most.
There is something compelling about looking through the arch at Cathedral Cove. The rock frames the view beyond, drawing your attention towards the opening.
It offers a useful thought for leaders: what does your reporting bring into view, and what does it leave out?
Imagine a business owner reviewing a successful quarter. Revenue is up. A new system is live. Most targets are green.
Yet the owner is still answering emails at ten o’clock. The promised family break has slipped again. Staff still bring every difficult decision to the same desk.
The business is growing. The freedom it was supposed to create remains just out of reach.
A senior executive might recognise a different version: projects delivered, budgets met, and another reporting cycle completed, while customers keep complaining about the very problems those projects were meant to solve.
The reports may be accurate. The picture is incomplete.
What are we moving towards?
In Leaders Creating Impact, CLARIFY establishes our shared direction. DELIVER brings it into everyday decisions through stronger accountability, effective delegation, and performance reporting that helps us act.
We explored accountability in May’s newsletter. This month let’s consider whether our scorecards help us see meaningful progress.
Kaplan and Norton’s observation, “What you measure is what you get,” remains a useful challenge. If our reports focus most on revenue, deadlines, and completed tasks, what important outcomes might fall outside the frame?
For leaders, that question reaches into three connected parts of life and business.
The life behind the business
Return to that owner working late. Perhaps their three-to-five-year aspiration was to build a business that could thrive without their constant involvement.
Their Personal Scorecard would make that aspiration visible, alongside health and wellbeing, relationships, home and living, career and business, finances and wealth, and contribution.
The next 90 days might include handing over a recurring decision and protecting time with family. A regular check-in would reveal whether those intentions were becoming reality.
This is part of our Design Your Best Life programme: giving personal aspirations enough attention to influence how we work. Complete our FREE Strategic Snapshot Activity from this programme to make a start on defining your personal aspirations. Link at the end of this post.
A founder or executive can achieve impressive professional results while repeatedly postponing the life those results were meant to support. That deserves a place in the conversation, even if the personal scorecard stays private.
The future behind the projects
Now consider what the business needs to make that personal aspiration possible: capable managers, clear decision rights, and customers who trust the wider team.
