The scoreboard
CO Rewrite: Originally posted May 18, 2009.
Sometimes we really need a scoreboard. Whatever we are doing - meeting, sending an email, working on a spreadsheet or completing a project - we should be able to look up and see the score. I'll take a timer too. "Down to the wire with days to go and we need two more points."
How important is this to success? I've worked with large organizations where team members on a project changed so frequently that no one member of the team ever experienced the project from start to finish. Tasks seemed to drag on and morph. The basketball game became football and then a batter stepped into the box. There was no scoreboard. The team members never experienced success (or failure). "It's all good," I remember hearing one of them say.
I've worked with other groups whose members believed the mere fact that a meeting was held demonstrated success. The meeting was the event. There were conference calls about the date of the meeting and agenda items. There were attendance details. There were supporting documents. The meeting became the point rather than a vehicle. There was no scoreboard to tell people how bad things were.
I like working for an organization which sees success as success. It is nice to see a product through from start to launch and operation. It is good to meet with a new client at the start of the relationship; to work through issues then meet with them again to renew a contract year after year. It is rewarding. Success breeds success. And failure is recognizable so that it too can breed success.
Some little league baseball programs have a rule for younger divisions that state no score is kept for the first half of the season. My experience with this rule has been that the only entity on the field that doesn't know the score during the first half of the season under these rules is the scoreboard. The kids know who won. The coaches know who won. The parents know who won. But there is no score.
We need scoreboards.
Sometimes we really need a scoreboard. Whatever we are doing - meeting, sending an email, working on a spreadsheet or completing a project - we should be able to look up and see the score. I'll take a timer too. "Down to the wire with days to go and we need two more points."
How important is this to success? I've worked with large organizations where team members on a project changed so frequently that no one member of the team ever experienced the project from start to finish. Tasks seemed to drag on and morph. The basketball game became football and then a batter stepped into the box. There was no scoreboard. The team members never experienced success (or failure). "It's all good," I remember hearing one of them say.
I've worked with other groups whose members believed the mere fact that a meeting was held demonstrated success. The meeting was the event. There were conference calls about the date of the meeting and agenda items. There were attendance details. There were supporting documents. The meeting became the point rather than a vehicle. There was no scoreboard to tell people how bad things were.
I like working for an organization which sees success as success. It is nice to see a product through from start to launch and operation. It is good to meet with a new client at the start of the relationship; to work through issues then meet with them again to renew a contract year after year. It is rewarding. Success breeds success. And failure is recognizable so that it too can breed success.
Some little league baseball programs have a rule for younger divisions that state no score is kept for the first half of the season. My experience with this rule has been that the only entity on the field that doesn't know the score during the first half of the season under these rules is the scoreboard. The kids know who won. The coaches know who won. The parents know who won. But there is no score.
We need scoreboards.
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