The 12 Week Year Field Guide

CHAPTER 5 Scorekeeping

Measurement drives execution. It is the anchor of reality. To create your best results, you will need to track your 12 Week Year results daily, weekly, and monthly! Without measurement, there is no way to react quickly enough when things are not working to ensure that you hit your 12 week goals.

Measurement tells you how you are doing—how your actions are impacting the world. Without effective metrics, you lack the important information you need to make intelligent business decisions. To make the 12 Week Year work for you, you will need to measure both lead and lag indicators. Lead indicators are measures that show early progress toward the end result, while lag indicators often are the end results.

When you realize that a single week is the equivalent of a month in a 12 Week Year, the need to track lead and lag measures is apparent—a week lost is a month lost—track your numbers!

Step One is to develop a set of key measures that are a mix of lead and lag indicators. An example of a good mix of lead and lag measures for a sales goal might be referrals (lead), inquiries (lead), sales in dollars (lag), units sold (lag), and units ordered (lag). Lead and lag measures are important, but don’t get carried away with too many metrics. Pick just the top one or two of each for you to track.

If you want to lose weight, a great lead indicator might be the number of hours that you exercise each week. A great lag indicator might be waist size or pounds lost. By tracking ...