Profits & Pints Recap — September 2026
What Does Good Look Like?
How to Build a Scorecard That Makes Performance Measurable
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The Big Idea: What Does Good Look Like?
“I just need them to do better.”
If you own a business or lead a team, there’s a good chance you’ve said some version of this before.
I need them to take more ownership.
I need them to communicate better.
I need them to follow through.
I need them to stay on top of things.
The frustration is real. But at September’s Profits & Pints, Samantha Doyle challenged us to ask a different question:
What does “better” actually mean?
Because while those expectations might feel perfectly clear to us, they can be incredibly difficult for someone else to act on and nearly impossible to objectively measure.
Sometimes, what looks like a performance problem is actually a clarity problem.
You Can’t Hold Someone Accountable to an Expectation You Haven’t Defined
Business owners often know when something doesn’t feel right.
Someone isn’t taking enough ownership. Things are falling through the cracks. Results aren’t where they should be. You find yourself stepping in more often than you’d like.
But knowing you’re frustrated isn’t the same as having a clear performance standard.
That’s where a scorecard becomes valuable.
A good scorecard takes expectations that can feel subjective and turns them into something you and your team can actually see, discuss, and improve.
Samantha broke it down into three questions:
What do they own?
What should happen?
How will we know?
Or:
Responsibility → Outcome → Metric
The goal isn’t to measure people for the sake of measuring them.
The goal is clarity.
When expectations are clear, your team knows what they’re working toward. When performance is visible, you know where to coach. And when everyone is looking at the same information, accountability becomes a conversation instead of a guessing game.
Clarity tells people where they’re going. Measurement tells everyone whether they’re getting there.
If You Can’t Define “Good,” Neither Can They
Imagine telling an employee that you need them to “take more ownership.”
They leave the conversation thinking they understand what you mean.
Thirty days later, you’re still frustrated.
You don’t think anything has changed. They think they’ve been doing exactly what you asked.
Who’s right?
Without a shared definition of what ownership actually looks like, there really isn’t a clear answer.
Instead, start with the responsibility.
For example, if someone is responsible for accounts receivable:
Responsibility: Manage outstanding invoices
Outcome: Customers pay on time
Metric: Percentage of accounts receivable more than 60 days old
Suddenly, “stay on top of accounts receivable” has a shared definition.
You’re no longer relying on a feeling to determine whether things are going well. You have something you can both see.
Before You Set the Goal, Know Where You’re Starting
Once you have a metric, it can be tempting to immediately decide what the number should be.
But Samantha cautioned against setting a target before understanding your baseline.
Let’s say 50% of your accounts receivable is currently more than 60 days old. You could decide the goal should be 0%, but is that actually a reasonable expectation right now?
Maybe. Maybe not.
You need more information first.
Start by measuring where you are today and what has historically been normal for the business. Once you understand the baseline, you can set a meaningful target for improvement.
In the workshop example, two months of measurement established an average baseline of 11%, which made an initial target of 8% much more grounded.
Measure first. Manage second.
As Samantha put it:
“Don’t confuse a guess with a standard.”
Don’t Wait Until the Result to Find Out Something Went Wrong
Another important distinction Samantha explored was the difference between leading and lagging indicators.
Most businesses naturally track lagging indicators:
Revenue.
Profit.
Callback rates.
Jobs completed on schedule.
Billable utilization.
Those numbers matter. But they tell you what already happened.
The more useful question is:
What could we measure earlier?
If callbacks are high, what happens before the callback?
Maybe quality checklists aren’t being completed. Maybe required documentation is missing. Maybe there’s a training or process issue.
If jobs consistently run behind schedule, what happens before that?
Were the parts confirmed?
Was all the necessary information available?
Were milestones being reviewed throughout the project?
Those are leading indicators.
Leading indicators give you an opportunity to influence the outcome while there’s still time to do something about it.
Lagging indicators tell you whether you ultimately got the result.
You need both.
You Don’t Need 37 KPIs
Once you start thinking about what you could measure, it’s easy to go too far.
There are dozens of things you could potentially track for almost any role.
That doesn’t mean you should.
The goal isn’t to create another giant spreadsheet no one wants to look at. It’s to identify the handful of numbers that give you meaningful visibility into whether someone is succeeding in their role.
Samantha encouraged business owners to aim for roughly three to five core metrics per role.
A useful question to ask is:
If I could only see three numbers for this role, which three would tell me the most?
That’s your starting point.
A Red Number Isn’t a Verdict. It’s a Question.
Now imagine you’ve created the scorecard, established your baseline and set your targets.
Then one of the numbers turns red.
What happens next?
The scorecard isn’t there so you can point at the number and say, “See? You’re failing.”
Instead, it gives you somewhere to start asking questions.
What’s happening here?
Is the expectation clear?
Is there a skill gap?
Is there a process getting in the way?
Does the person have the resources they need?
Is it an accountability issue?
Is this simply the wrong metric?
Or is the role itself not the right fit?
An off-track metric gives you information.
And that information helps you figure out where coaching, support, accountability, or a larger change may be needed.
The scorecard tells you where to coach. Leadership tells you how to coach.
Visibility Doesn’t Mean Micromanagement
There’s another trap business owners can fall into once they start getting better visibility.
They start watching everything.
Then they start stepping in.
Then, before long, they’re doing the work again.
That’s not the goal.
A scorecard should give you enough visibility to know what’s happening without needing to be involved in every detail of how it happens.
If the numbers are on track, great.
If something starts moving off track, now you know where to have a conversation.
That’s very different from constantly checking, reminding, following up and taking work back over.
Visibility should help you coach without micromanaging.
Start With One Role
You don’t need to leave this workshop and immediately build scorecards for every person in your company.
Start with one role where expectations or performance currently feel a little fuzzy.
Then ask:
What do they own?
What should happen?
How will we know?
Where are we today?
What does good look like?
Choose a few meaningful metrics.
If you don’t know the baseline yet, don’t guess.
Start measuring.
You can refine the scorecard as you learn.
Because ultimately:
“You don’t need more measurement. You need meaningful measurement.”
The goal isn’t more data.
It’s better visibility, clearer expectations, more productive coaching, and a team that knows what success actually looks like.
Save the Date!
📅 October 20, 2026
🕓 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
📍 6th Street Bar & Grill | Eugene, OR
At our next Profits & Pints, we’ll explore how to turn a vague priority into a clear definition of done, break a 90-day priority into milestones and deadlines, and create the visibility and accountability that keeps priorities moving.
The Topic:
Why Isn’t It Getting Done?
How to Turn Priorities Into Progress for You and Your Team
RSVP for the next Profits & Pints event or join our email list to receive future invites.
Until next time, cheers to smart moves and great conversation.
— Samantha & the SBC Team 🍻
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