Posting a simple public measure of progress on the change, updated often, makes momentum visible, gives backers something to point to, and lets skeptics see the trend for themselves.
An example
Halfway through a hospital tower build, the general contractor's project director had a coordination problem that nobody above her believed was being fixed. More than four hundred open design questions sat between the architect, the engineers, and her trades, and every owner's meeting turned into an argument about whose fault the backlog was. She put one chart on the wall of the site trailer and on the first page of the weekly owner's report: open questions, questions closed that week, and average days to answer, by firm. She updated it every Friday from the project log, which every party could see. Within six weeks the open count fell to one hundred eighty. The owner's representative stopped asking whether the problem was being handled and started asking the architect why its line was flat.
Why it works
Visible measures make the change look better by turning progress into something everyone can see, so supporters have evidence and skeptics can watch the trend without taking anyone's word for it. A posted number also keeps attention on the outcome between meetings, when support for a long change tends to erode. It works when the measure is simple, honest, and tied to the goal, updated often enough to show movement, and drawn from data the audience trusts.
The thinking behind it
Chris McChesney The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals (2012), by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and a third co-author, sets out four disciplines, one of which is to keep a compelling scoreboard: a simple, visible record of progress that tells the team at a glance whether it is winning. The chart of open design questions in the site trailer was that kind of record, and its weekly update kept every firm looking at the same number.
Teresa M. Amabile Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer's The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (2011), drawn from nearly 12,000 daily diary entries by professionals on complex projects, found that making progress in meaningful work, even in small steps, is a major driver of motivation. A public measure that shows the open count falling makes those small steps visible, which helps sustain the effort between milestones.
When it fits
Strongest for a change that will take months, where progress is real but hard to see and support erodes between milestones. You need a measure that captures the goal, data you can update weekly or more often, and a place your audience already looks: a wall, a report, a dashboard. It fails when the measure is easy to game or progress has stalled.
How to use it well
Choose one or two measures that track the outcome itself, ones a skeptic would accept as fair, and pull them from data others can check.
- Show the trend and the target on one page or one wall, readable in seconds.
- Update on a fixed schedule, including the bad weeks.
- Put it where the decision-makers and the people doing the work both look.
- Name owners where the measure allows, so progress has faces.
When the line goes the wrong way, say so first and say what you are doing about it.
What it costs and where it backfires
Going public with a measure commits you: when progress stalls, everyone sees it. Whatever you measure attracts effort, so a narrow measure can pull work away from things that matter but do not count. Naming owners can embarrass people and make colleagues defensive. Everything rests on honest data. Changing the definition, dropping a bad week, or choosing a measure that moves while the real outcome does not turns a scoreboard into a vanity chart, and skeptics who check the source will catch it.
When it is used on you
Read the definition and the source data behind a rival's scoreboard, and ask what the measure leaves out. If it is honest, accept the trend. If it counts activity instead of results, propose a better measure in the same forum where the scoreboard is shown.