A mind set for scoreboarding can help you. John Maxwell says, “What gets measured, gets done”. This is true for the individual and the organization. If you are serious about doing something or accomplishing something or fixing something, figure out a way to measure it and post the measurement. If it’s your weight you want to change, weigh yourself daily and keep a written chart.
You can put a number on anything. Use, let’s say –10 to +10 for any experience. Maybe you want to enjoy exercise or cold calling or expense reports more. Put a number from –10 to +10 on your usual experience with –10 being the worst experience you can imagine and +10 being the best experience you can imagine. Let’s say with exercise you are on average a +3. Sit down and make a list of what it would take to get you to a +5. When you get to a +5 sit down and think about what it would take to get you to a +7. I’m not saying you can get to +10 on every activity but you can move the number.
What do you need? Can you combine the activity with something? Maybe you need to add music. Maybe you need to add another person. What will make this experience better by 2 numbers? Keep working on it.
Sports is almost defined by numbers and statistics. Basketball, baseball, or football without a scoreboard would be almost pointless. I keep meticulous score when I golf that goes way beyond strokes per hole and total strokes. I keep a running tally of the number of fairways I hit, the puts per hole, and sand saves. When I was a kid collecting baseball cards I was obsessed with memorizing statistics on my favorite players. I had a baseball encyclopedia that had stats for every season for every player since they started keeping records. As a baseball player, even as an adult, I went home after every game and figured my stats for the game and my batting average for the season to date.
In selling, my sales improved when I started keeping meticulous records. The sales people I know who do very well in my industry all keep track of numbers. Numbers also allow for competition which almost always increases performance. The following is one of my favorite stories…
The great industrialist Charles Schwab was quite disappointed when the workers in his steel mill were not meeting their production quota. He asked the foreman what was wrong. "I don't know," he replied, "I've pushed then and threatened to fire them, but nothing works. They seen to have no incentive to produce."
Later, just before the night shift came on, Schwab went back to the plant and asked the supervisor how many heats his crew had processed that day. He was informed it was only six. Schwab took a piece of chalk and wrote a large figure "6" on the floor and walked away. When the other workers came in, they asked what it meant. "The big boss was here today," the manager said. "He asked how many heats were made and then chalked the number on the floor." The next morning the night shift rubbed out the "6" and replaced it with a big "7." When the day workers returned and saw the higher figure, one man exclaimed, "We can do better than that!" His fellow employees caught his enthusiasm, and when they quit that night, they chalked on the floor an enormous "10." It was a 66 percent increase in just 24 hours and all because of Schwab's creation of a make shift scoreboard!
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