The Coaches Weren’t Watching the Scoreboard

I spent last weekend the way a lot of us do this time of year, watching college football. But somewhere in the second game, I noticed something I had never really paid attention to before.

The coaches were not watching the scoreboard.

Not the good ones, anyway. They were locked onto the field. How was their own offense executing? Was the line holding? Where was the other team finding room, and how were they adjusting? Every ounce of their attention was on the game being played in front of them, not the number posted above it.

And it hit me: that is exactly how a business should be run. And it is a near-perfect picture of what we do.

The scoreboard is the financials

Think about it. The scoreboard is the financials. It tells you the score, revenue, profit, cash, but you cannot change the score by staring at it. The score is the result of everything happening on the field. A coach who watches only the scoreboard is watching the past. A coach who watches the game can still change the outcome.

So what are the great coaches actually watching?

First, their own team

How are we executing, across every position, every unit? Where are we strong, and where is a weakness quietly costing us? That is COMPASS™, the inside read. It scores how your business is actually running across the operating areas that determine performance, and it finds the weak spot before it shows up on the scoreboard.

Second, the opponent and the conditions

What is the other team doing? Where is the field opening up, and where are the threats? That is BEACON™, the outside read. It sizes the market you actually play in and maps where the opportunities and the dangers are.

And the thing that pulls it together, the coach's command of both his own team and the game around him, turned into a plan? That is CMG 360™. The inside read and the outside read, combined into one strategy you can actually run.

The part that stayed with me

There are plenty of coaches who do watch the scoreboard, who manage to the number and react to the result. But you will notice something about them. They are not the ones coaching on the national stage on Saturday night. The teams playing in front of the biggest audiences, with the most on the line, are led by people who manage the game, not the score.

It is the same in business. Owners who run their company by the financials alone, reacting to last month's numbers, are watching the scoreboard. The ones who build something exceptional are watching the field: how the business is really executing, and how the market is really moving. The score follows.

The financials will always tell you what happened. They just will not tell you what to do about it. For that, you have to look at the game.