Leading indicator

Roughly two thirds of a weekly Scorecard should be leading rows, because those are the ones a Monday meeting can do anything about. Delivery teams usually run heavier than that. The lagging rows stay as proof: if activity is green for two months and revenue has not moved, the activity was the wrong activity.

Leading rows are the easiest to game, because activity is easy to manufacture. A team told to book more discovery calls will book calls with people who were never going to buy. That is why the definition matters more here than anywhere else. Count calls held with someone who can sign, write down what does not count, and keep a lagging row nearby as the check.

Worked example: A sixteen-person IT services firm tracked signed contracts and nothing else, so every bad month arrived as a surprise. They put two rows in front of it: qualified discovery calls held and proposals sent. Six weeks later proposals fell to two in a week and they knew within three days rather than at month end. The cause was one salesperson covering another's territory.

Sources: onstrategyhq.com/resources/leading-and-lagging-indicators; The Balanced Scorecard, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton (1996)