The Game of Work / Coonradt 42-46

43 Cash flow is the barometer of business health.

45 Good farmers don't eat the seed corn.

46 Basics of good scorekeeping.

1. Scorekeeping must be simple and objective.

2. Scorekeeping must be self-administered. Self-administered graphing and scorekeeping is best.

When people keep their own scorecards, they know whether they won or lost that day and also how much they improved, regardless of whether or not the coach had a bad day.

3. Scorekeeping must offer a comparison between current personal performance, pas personal performance, and an accepted standard.

The success of a scorekeeping system is recreation depends upon how well it compares current performance with past performance and with the accepted national average. Too often in business we generate a scorekeeping system that tells how well we did only in comparison to an arbitrary, artificially imposed standard.

4. Scorekeeping should be dynamic. It should allow players to review performance during the game.

Business no longer have to wait until the end of the month to know how they are doing. They can know daily, even hourly. Yet most businesses still have twelve accounting periods just like before WW II. You don't know what you did in March until the middle of April--too late to make any adjustments for March.