A scoreboard is five to eight weekly numbers that say whether last week was a win. Each one has one owner, a target, and a place the whole team can see it. The owner fills it in before the weekly meeting, and the meeting opens with each number read in one word: on track or off track. It is not a dashboard, which shows everything and is owned by nobody, and it is not the P&L, which arrives three weeks late and tells you what already happened. The worksheet is free: download the weekly scoreboard and the leak finder (PDF).
An NFL team always knows if it won. The score is right there at the end of the game, no debate, no spin. Most owners cannot say that about last week, so they manage by feel and make decisions out of the emotion of the day. The Scoreboard is the second part of how we work because once the destination is written down, this is how the team finds out whether it is getting closer.
Outcomes, not activity
The first mistake is scoring effort. Dials made, hours logged, tasks closed, posts published: all of it feels productive, all of it is easy to count, and none of it says whether the business moved. Score the result the activity is supposed to produce: meetings held, proposals signed, jobs delivered on time, invoices paid within terms. The activity numbers can live on each team’s own sheet. Only outcomes go on the scoreboard.
The second page of the worksheet is a sorter for this. List everything you track today, mark each one activity or outcome, and for each activity number write the outcome it is supposed to produce. That outcome is the number that belongs on the board.
The shape of a scoreboard
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| The number | An outcome, stated so anyone can count it |
| Owner | One name. The person who fills it in and is asked first when it moves |
| Target | The weekly figure that means on track |
| Weeks 1 to 4 | Filled in before the meeting, never during it |
| On or off | One word, read aloud in The Weekly. Off track goes on the issues list |
Leading numbers go at the top, because they move first: consultations booked this week moves before revenue does. Revenue against goal, cash on hand, and last month’s gross margin sit at the bottom, always in view, never a fire drill. Five to eight rows. If a number moving would not change a decision, it does not belong on the sheet.
Find the leak
When revenue goes soft, everyone blames the leads. It is almost never the leads. It is the two handoffs after them: did the conversation actually happen, and did it close because a person on your team asked for the business. The leak finder on the worksheet maps the path from first contact to paid, six steps for most service businesses, and puts two counts on each step: how many entered last month and how many made it through. The biggest drop is the leak. It gets a name and a target on the scoreboard, and it is usually the single highest-return number an owner-led business can watch.
The path for most service businesses: leads in, conversation held, proposal sent, signed, delivered on time, paid within terms. Yours may have a step more or fewer. The point is that each handoff has a rate and an owner, because the handoffs are where the money goes missing, and nobody owns a handoff by default.
The rules
- Filled in before the meeting, never during it. A number that is not ready is off track by definition.
- One word per number in the meeting. The discussion happens in The Solve, where there is time for it. The Weekly agenda has the numbers segment at ten minutes for this reason.
- The owner does not fill in anyone else’s number. If the owner is pulling the data, the owner owns the number, whatever the sheet says.
- Same meeting, every week. A scoreboard reviewed monthly is a report. Weekly is what makes it management.
- Where the team already looks. A shared sheet the team opens on Monday beats a dashboard behind a login nobody remembers.
Start with three
If there is no scoreboard yet, do not wait for clean data or a tool. Start with the three numbers you can get by Monday morning, even if one is a tally on a whiteboard. Read them in the weekly meeting. Within a month the meeting will have built the rest, because every week shows which figure is missing when an issue comes up and nobody can size it.
Software helps once the numbers exist and a team member compiles them. Origin’s software holds the scoreboard live so nobody pulls it by hand. The writing comes first.
Download the weekly scoreboard, the leak finder, and the activity-or-outcome sorter (PDF). Free, no form. If you are not sure the scoreboard is where to start, the Origin Score is twenty-seven questions, takes about five minutes, and shows where your business is narrowest right now.
