Keeping Score in Business

//Keeping Score in Business

Some people don’t like being measured.


Being measured can be a reminder of school, grades, evaluations of performance. Test-taking.

“I don’t want be measured—I’m afraid that I’ll find out that I’m wrong.”
(or, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I’m not doing it right.”)

“Not measuring” protects people from failing.
When you’re not measuring, there’s nothing to lose.

What’s not so obvious is that when you’re not measuring, people can’t win.

When avoiding losing, people rob themselves of the opportunity of accomplishment.

When people don’t measure results, they rob themselves and their teams of the opportunity to stretch, to grow, to build muscles.
Falling short of intended results can be a powerful way to build prowess in result producing.
That’s not obvious. It’s counter-intuitive.

Playing the game to WIN, allows your team to confront what it really takes.

Falling short sometimes gives the opportunity to re-think, re-strategize, re-group and engage in the question of

“How the hell CAN we accomplish this?”

It builds resilience.

Measuring builds muscle: in accomplishment, in producing results, in creativity.
It’s different than merely working hard and going through the motions—

“Same old, same old—different day…………………………………….zzzz.”

Playing to win is inspiring and enlivening. It rallies the team.

(It also creates an environment where people who aren’t really committed, are more likely to go to work elsewhere…that works, too.)

For someone who hasn’t measured, or been measured much in life, it can be confronting at first.

Support people in this space with encouragement and compassion—and keep measuring. Have them focus on building muscles and producing results, rather than avoiding failing. Have them turn around and face forward into the future, rather than walking backward into their future.


Promote people’s strengths.  Cheer them on.  Get behind people.

Have them notice that they don’t die, when they fall short!

Give your people a NEW perspective about measuring and being measured.

Come on, get up, keep playing! Let’s go!

And let’s whistle while we work. (Given that we have choice about it.)

Playing to win requires keeping score. Put up a scoreboard. Make it fun.
As my most amazing Teacher said,

“You get what you measure for.”


Keeping score creates a road map.  A path to follow.

Where’s the road?
How fast are we going?
Where are we?
Where are we going?
Are we there yet?


PS: Now and then, I’ve seen some people who’ve tried to win by “gaming the system.” That’s not winning,…that’s cheating.

2018-03-27T10:31:53-07:00By |Uncategorized|


  1. Charlotte MacIlraith April 3, 2018 at 7:06 am - Reply

    So how exactly do you measure for something. I get the concept but can you describe it in a simple way. Is it declarations? Is there a recipe for measuring that makes it simple to understand. So I can share it with my team. So I can be specific about what we are measuring for.

    • Caryn April 3, 2018 at 5:49 pm - Reply

      This is a great question, Charlotte. Here are a few ideas to ponder:

      1. Think of business like a game. How do we know if we’re winning today? this month? this year? (Which leads to the question, “What IS winning, for us?”) It’s valuable to make things specific and measurable, with a “by when.”
      2. Think of sports–a game gets invented, with rules and parameters. And there’s a scoreboard. What gets tracked on the scoreboard depends on what’s important to measure–in alignment with winning the game. (In business, I define “winning the game” as meeting or exceeding the intended outcomes.)
      3. Consider that what gets measured by each individual on your team (or each area of accountability) isn’t necessarily the same. For example: It’s likely that what the Sales Manager measures is very different than what the Production Manager measures.

      A couple of practical examples of items that might be measured: (there are a LOT of things you could measure for, by the way!)
      For the Sales Manager, “How many new potential Clients were introduced to our company today? Our game is 10 per day.”
      For the Production Manager, “We estimated we’d be half finished with this project today. Did we accomplish that? Did we finish in 6 hours instead of 8? Or did we go over time?

      How effective and excellent can your team be, at keeping promises–for the Customer and for your Company?

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