Progress and Confidence - what's the score?

Leading and lagging indicators

Learning outcomes:

• What is the progress score
• What is the confidence score 
• Why have progress and confidence
• How they are displayed on the objective

 

Progress

Outcomes should be measurable, specific, time-bound, verifiable, and aggressive but realistic. So, if an outcome is measurable you can easily indicate the progress of the outcome, and therefore the goal. Outcome progress indicates movement towards achieving the outcome.

 

If we use an example outcome of "generate 100 new leads by 30 June", and we have generated 50 new leads, then our progress should indicate 50. We're halfway towards achieving the outcome.

 

Confidence

Outcome confidence score indicates how confident we are about achieving our outcome. We score on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being "impossible, I can't achieve this" and 10 being "i've got this in the bag". Although you score confidence on a scale of 0 to 10 it is displayed as a percentage score.

 

Using the same example as above, "generate 100 new leads by 30 June", by the end of April we've generated 50 new leads, awesome! Your progress towards achieving the outcome is 5 and you're only a month into the quarter. But... you've exhausted all avenues and cannot see a way of generating another 50 new leads by 30 June. 

 

Why have both?

If you think of leading and lagging indicators, progress is a lagging indicator, and confidence is a leading indicator. A lagging indicator looks back at what has already happened. A leading indicator looks forwards into the future.

 

Progress alone does not indicate whether or not you can achieve your outcome. It's a 2 dimensional number that indicates your progress towards the target but does not account for the timeframe. Adding a confidence score provides more context to an outcome. It's an indicator for the team around you as to how comfortable, or confident, you are in achieving the outcome.

 

Continuing from above, you're progress shows 50 but your confidence score is a 2. This is a red flag to the team and your manager that there's a roadblock. So, while preparing for the weekly check-in your manager notices your confidence score is low and asks why. You explain you've exhausted all avenues and you're not sure where you're going to get another 50 leads from. Guess what... your manager and teammate Gary can help! 

 

On the contrary, if you have reasonable to high confidence in achieving an outcome, you may score it 8 or above. If your progress remains low, say only 20% complete after month 1, your team and manager will know that while progress remains slightly low, you are still comfortable with what you need to do.

 

How progress and confidence are updated and displayed

Progress and Confidence are both updated on an outcome but role up to the goal.

 

Select the metric you are measuring on the outcome, choose from a monetary measure, a number or a percentage. Your progress tracks your actual progress towards achieving the outcome. For example, if you are tracking revenue, your progress will reflect how much revenue you have generated in the period and will display as a currency.Progress is updated immediately after you update the input. 

 

To update the confidence score, slide the slider to the right to increase confidence, or to the left to decrease confidence. Your confidence score is updated immediately to the score you have set.

At the goal level, the progress and confidence score is the average of each of the related outcomes. It is visualised in charts on the goal detail page.