When Gut Feel Isn’t Enough: How the Business Scorecard Brings Focus

KPM SMARTBiz
May 9
3 min read

LSS Toolkit: Making Strategy Visible with the Business Scorecard

When Gut Feel Isn’t Enough: How the Business Scorecard Brings Focus

There’s a moment in every leadership role when you realize the truth:

You can’t manage what you can’t see.

Early in my career, I leaned heavily on instinct. I thought being hands-on meant I had the pulse of the business. And for a while, that worked—until things got complex. Multiple priorities. Different departments pulling in different directions. Goals clashing. Signals getting lost.

That’s when the Business Scorecard came into view. Not as another dashboard—but as a shared language.

The Wake-Up Call at CRB

At CRB, we were chasing operational improvements across departments—finance wanted efficiency, customer service pushed for speed, ops aimed for cost control. All valid goals. All slightly at odds.

I remember a meeting where each leader presented “success metrics.” They were all different.

That was the moment it hit me:

If everyone has their own scoreboard, we’re not playing the same game.

We introduced a simple business scorecard that tracked KPIs across four lenses:

Customer Experience
Operational Performance
Financial Health
People & Culture

Suddenly, tensions turned into tradeoffs we could discuss. When we increased delivery speed, but customer complaints rose, the scorecard made the cost visible. We weren’t just optimizing a number—we were balancing outcomes.

The result? Fewer blind spots. Better conversations. And alignment that actually stuck.

Groupe D’Resto: Beyond the Numbers

At Groupe D’Resto, the scorecard helped us avoid a common trap: chasing financial wins at the expense of everything else.

In our first iteration, revenue was front and center—but staff turnover was rising, and customer feedback was slipping.

We adjusted. The next version of the scorecard gave equal weight to:

Guest satisfaction
Staff engagement
Inventory accuracy
Profit margins

This balanced view created new behaviors. Managers started reviewing labor and guest feedback together. Chefs looked at food waste alongside cost per plate. The culture shifted—from chasing performance to understanding it.

The irony? Financial results improved when we stopped obsessing over them in isolation.

At FoodArt: Making Strategy Tangible

At FoodArt, we had a clear vision. But the challenge was translating strategy into daily action. Everyone knew what we wanted—but not always how we’d measure progress.

So we built a lightweight scorecard with visual cues—color-coded targets, trend lines, owner names. It wasn’t flashy, but it was public and persistent.

One section tracked onboarding experience scores. When a drop appeared, the team didn’t wait for quarterly reviews—they asked “what changed?” and adjusted mid-cycle. That responsiveness wasn’t an accident. It was designed in.

Over time, the scorecard became a habit. Something we didn’t just update—but talked about.

ACCOR: Living the Scorecard Mindset

At ACCOR, I saw scorecard thinking without the formal template. Leaders would constantly ask:

What matters most this quarter?
Are we improving, or just busy?
Where are we falling behind?

They weren’t tracking 20 metrics. Just the critical few. But they used them relentlessly.

It taught me this:The value of a scorecard isn’t in the document—it’s in the discipline.The rhythm of review. The courage to confront what’s not working. The clarity to celebrate progress.

My Takeaways (From Scorecards That Helped—and Some That Didn’t)

Too many metrics kill focus. Choose the vital few. If everything matters, nothing does.
Balance is the point. Financials, customers, operations, and people—when one dominates, the others drift.
Make it visible. A scorecard that sits in a drawer helps no one. Put it on a wall. Put it in the room.
Review regularly. Monthly. Bi-weekly. Pick a rhythm and stick to it.
Don’t chase perfection. It doesn’t need to be sleek—it just needs to be clear and used.

Final Thought: Alignment You Can See

In fast-moving organizations, misalignment doesn’t always announce itself. It creeps in quietly—through missed targets, burnout, or decisions that don’t add up. The Business Scorecard doesn’t fix that on its own—but it makes misalignment visible. And once you can see it, you can lead through it.

So next time you're deep in a planning session, ask yourself:

Do we have a scoreboard everyone’s actually playing to—or just a list of hopes and metrics?