Your scorecard is a trap

In 2002, Patrick Lencioni wrote an article for Harvard Business Review called Make Your Values Mean Something. Spoiler alert: most companies are terrible at core values.

It’s not that they don’t have them.

In 2025 I wouldn’t be surprised if my kid’s tball team had core values.

It’s that they fall into what Lencioni calls Core Values Traps. These are the ways organizations convince themselves they have real values when, in reality, they’ve got a bunch of words on a wall that don’t mean anything. And if you get your values wrong, you don’t just create confusion—you destroy trust.

The Three Core Values Traps

Aspirational Values – These are the things you wish you were but aren’t. If you are writing “innovation” in a word doc about core values and you can see a little animated paper clip, you’re doing it wrong. The real problem? If you say you are something and then prove you aren’t, people don’t just stop believing in that one value—they stop believing everything you say.

Accidental Values – These are the things that shaped you in the past but won’t take you where you need to go. My favorite example is the “employees’ friends” hiring strategy. Your first hire was a skater punk kid. The second hire was their skater punk friend. Now you have 15 employees, and 11 of them are skater punks. But is being a skater punk a core value? Is it something you can use to hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people? No. It’s an accident. “Entrepreneurial spirit” is another common example—just because it worked at the start doesn’t mean it’s the thing that will drive long-term success.

Permission-to-Play Values – These are the bare minimum requirements for being a decent human. Saying “Honesty” is a core value is like saying “Breathing” is a core value. Every company expects honesty. It doesn’t differentiate you from anyone else. If your list of core values reads like the boy scout oath, you’re doing it wrong.

The Same Traps Apply to Your Scorecard

A great scorecard is one of the most powerful tools a company can have. It gives you 5-15 weekly leading indicators that tell you whether your business is on track or off track. But just like with core values, companies fall into the same traps when building their scorecards.

Aspirational Scorecard Metrics

Ever seen someone set a goal so ambitious that it’s doomed from the start? That’s an aspirational metric. If your scorecard is full of numbers that represent where you hope to be someday instead of where you need to be to know you’re healthy, you don’t have a scorecard—you have a wish list.

This is like the personal daily scorecard people create when they want to change their habits. They go from doing virtually nothing to a morning routine that includes exercise, meditation, journaling, yoga, sauna, skincare, stretching, practicing the oboe, and God knows what else. It lasts about three days before it completely collapses.

Your scorecard should tell you whether you’re on track or off track in a meaningful way. If you can’t meet the numbers every single week, you’re setting yourself (and your team) up for failure.

Accidental Scorecard Metrics

Look at your scorecard and ask yourself: Are we tracking this because it’s important or because we’ve always tracked it?

It’s easy to mistake activity for progress. Just because a metric exists doesn’t mean it’s worth measuring. If you’re tracking things out of habit, your scorecard becomes a burden instead of a tool. It’s like the Queen in Through the Looking-Glass who says you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.

A great scorecard forces you to ask tough questions: Is this worth doing at all? If the answer is no, it’s time to let it go.

Permission-to-Play Scorecard Metrics

The best scorecard measurables tell you something useful. But too often, companies fill their scorecards with numbers that feel like default choices.

Revenue is the classic example. Of course, you need to know how much money you’re making. But revenue is table stakes. It doesn’t tell you whether your team is taking the right actions each week to drive success. It just tells you whether the business already succeeded or failed.

A scorecard full of permission-to-play metrics gives you a generic view of your team. It doesn’t tell you what actually matters. The best scorecards don’t just measure results; they measure the leading indicators that drive results.

The best core values are real, intentional, and distinctive—and the same goes for scorecards. If you want your business to have a meaningful pulse on what’s working and what’s not, run your scorecard through the same filters:

• Are we tracking things we wish we were doing instead of what’s actually happening?

• Are we tracking things because we always have, rather than because they matter?

• Are we tracking things that every company tracks instead of the things that truly define success for us?