Hi there 👋
Random question to kick things off: How far into a book must you read before you can consider that you’ve “read the book”? Is it 50 percent? More? Less? Does it only count if you read the entire thing? Asking for a friend — a friend who likes to say he’s read a lot of books :) (me)
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Kevan
(ᵔᴥᵔ)
Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
The 4 Best Scoreboards for Tracking and Celebrating Your Marketing Team’s Progress
Several years ago, I read the book The Four Disciplines of Execution, a business book about goal-setting, performance, and team management that introduced a process called 4DX that many, many high-profile teams swear by.
Here are my highlights from the book.
[If you’ve ever heard me talk about the whirlwind, a euphemism for all the necessary work required just to keep the ship afloat, I took the concept from 4DX. “If your team is operating exclusively in the whirlwind, they’re giving everything they have just to sustain their day to day operation and survive. They’re not playing to win; they’re playing not to lose. And the result is a big difference in performance.” ]
I’ve yet to fully roll out 4DX to any of my teams, but I’ve definitely borrowed concepts like Wildly Important Goals and whirlwinds and … you guessed it … scoreboards.
Now, scoreboards are not a concept unique to 4DX. Scoreboards are used by teams all over the place whether they’ve heard of 4DX or not.
Scoreboards can be dashboards, like in Mixpanel or Google Analytics or Looker.
They can be in spreadsheets.
They can be in Miro boards.
They can be viewed on macbooks or sent to big screen monitors.
They can be shared with execs or kept to your teams.
Whatever mode of scoreboarding you choose, the most important thing is that the scoreboard helps show you: Here’s where we need to be and here’s where we are right now.
It should be:
Simple
Easily discoverable / bookmarkable
Easily understood by the people doing the work and easily communicated when you manage up
There are a ton of different ways to create these dashboards. The following are a few of my favorite means of doing so, all of which you’re welcome to borrow, copy, adapt, and use.
1. Stoplights
Get a copy of this in Sheets →
The technical term for this kind of chart is an andon chart, which is used on production lines and consists of colored signals or lights that show whether things are on track (green), at risk (yellow), or off track (red).
When I build this type of scoreboard, I like to group metrics by their place in the customer journey (awareness, acquisition, revenue, retention) and then list them in order of their importance (most important to the left).
You end up with a grid of colored squares that give you a quick view into how things are going across your 12-16 most important metrics.
2. Hierarchy of metrics
This concept comes from the great folks at Reforge who teach this methodology in their courses. The framework is simple enough: Start with your North Star metric, then list out the cascade of metrics that build toward your North Star.
I typically like to go three-to-four levels deep, depending on the ambition of the North Star and the size of my team. If it’s a super ambitious North Star, then I’ll add more layers of hierarchy to get to core, leading indicators. If I have a smaller team, I’ll do fewer layers of hierarchy so that we’re not drowning in measurement.
You can build this type of scoreboard in any tool. In Miro, the process is a bit more manual … but it sure looks cool!
3. Flowchart
I love this type of scoreboard because it shows the relationship between different metrics. Logically I know that if my website traffic is up, then my conversions are likely to be up and my acquisition is up, etc. But it’s so nice to know this logically and also to see it visually!
Some tools like Google Analytics can create this type of scoreboard for you. I’m partial to data viz tools like Doubleloop that add an even greater layer of customization and integration so you can see all the things that may be important to your team’s success.
4. Waterfall
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Waterfall charts are my desert-island scoreboard of choice (although if I was bringing scoreboard methodology with me to a desert island, I probably wouldn’t be long for this world!). I’ve used them for years, and I love the visual.
Waterfall charts work by setting a target, modeling the path to arrive there either linearly or non-linearly, and then plotting progress-to-target on a regular cadence. The chart lets you see where you stand relative to where you should be, if you hope to make it to target by the end of your cycle.
I will often add waterfall lines for 70% to target, 85% to target, and 100% to target because this matches how I think of OKR goal-setting: It’s an OKR win if you get 70% of the way to your ambitious goal.
Over to you
What types of scoreboards do you use with your team? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit reply or drop me an email at hello@kevanlee.com.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I currently lead the marketing team at Oyster. I previously built brands at Buffer, Vox, and Polly. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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