Riaz Khadem, founder and CEO of Infotrac, thinks every employer should be using a scorecard system. In his book Total Alignment, Khadem asserts that the scorecard connects individuals with your company’s vision and strategy—and, when all the employees have a scorecard, the entire company is aligned, people are focused on the most important activities, and accountability is clear.
He cautions that the power of the individual scorecard depends to a large extent on the employee taking ownership of his or her factors. To maximize the sense of personal ownership, Khadem recommends including an employee from each job in constructing the scorecards.
Expect that the first attempt to devise scorecards will produce a large number of success indicators, especially for top managers, because employees believe a higher number of indicators translates to a more important job. Khadem, though, says that scorecards should have no more than five indicators. It’s better to focus on three to five main factors and assure outstanding performance in those than to diffuse your focus across a large number of factors.