Quit Spending So Much Time on the Scorecard [3 Tips to Get It Right]

Your Team is probably spending too much time on the Scorecard discussing Issues that should be discussed during the Raise, Discuss, and Resolve (RDR) section of your meeting agenda. Understanding this section of the Weekly Team Meeting and adequately preparing the Scorecard will lead to more efficient meetings.

This week, we cover the Scorecard section of the Weekly Team Meetings agenda. Ninety's goal is to make data a superpower. Interactions with the Scorecard during Weekly Team Meetings are a large part of that.

Here are three things to keep in mind when talking about the Scorecard during your Weekly Team Meeting:

1. Don't spend a lot of time on it.

The information supplied by the Scorecard frequently merits long discussions. The Scorecard section of the Weekly Team Meeting agenda is just not where those conversations should be happening.

Meetings become more efficient when teams save all discussions until every Issue topic is on the table. Only then can the Issues be prioritized. That prioritization is crucial for efficient meetings.

We believe the most powerful tool in the Meetings arsenal is to right-click and "Make it an Issue." This is valid in every agenda section but especially shines during the Scorecard.

See a data point that indicates there is an Issue? Right-click and "drop it to the bottom" (add it to the Issues list). When creating an Issue, throw a couple of words in the title to remind everyone why it's a topic of discussion. Then, keep it moving. If it's important now, it'll still be important when it comes time to Raise, Discuss, and Resolve.

2. Prep the Scorecard so it performs.

Everything about the Scorecard is designed so that the data can be digested quickly.

The green, yellow, and red color tabs readily indicate if a data point is on the way to or already going off track. Use these colors to show where attention should be focused.

The colors respond to the goals attached to each Key Performance Indicator (KPI). But how do we ensure those goals are still valid? Activating the "Total" or "Average" column provides a benchmark for those goals, allowing us to ask if they are still valid or need to be discussed.

At Ninety, we like to use multiple KPIs to track an outcome. This helps us triangulate an exact outcome — or at least paints a better picture. We group those similar KPIs together using line breaks. Humans are better at identifying a trend in data when we see it grouped. For more details on how to apply line breaks, visit our help article here.

3. Include all the data!

This last bit is essential but straightforward: all data must be loaded into the Scorecard before starting the Meeting. The team can't react to data they don't have. We firmly believe that someone on the team should own the upload process because, as we know, accountability is critical.

We all want more efficient meetings. Ninety can help achieve them, and understanding the importance of creating an Issue for later discussion and adequately preparing the Scorecard goes a long way to making efficiency happen.

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