Employee role scorecards

Job description versus role scorecard

• A job description lists tasks and seniority. A scorecard names the outcomes the role owns for the next two quarters.
• A job description says who reports to whom. A scorecard says what the person decides alone and what comes to the manager.
• A job description is written once. A scorecard is revisited when the work changes, so the standard never drifts away from the job.
• A job description is generic enough to hire from. A scorecard is specific enough to review against.

How to write one in ten minutes

• Start from the work, not the title. What would be visibly missing if this person stopped for a month?
• Write three outcomes for the next two quarters, in the plainest words you have. No verbs that mean nothing.
• Write the decision rights: what the person can decide alone, and what has to come to the manager first.
• Write the boundaries: what this role does not own. This is the line that prevents overlap with the founder's work.
• Have the manager approve it before anyone is assessed against it, and share it with the person.

Why it changes the review

Reviewing against a task list invites the answer 'I did everything on the list'. Reviewing against outcomes and decision rights gives the manager and the person one shared standard that existed before the outcome was known — which is what makes a decision defensible.

The second effect is smaller and more useful: overlap becomes visible. Two people, one job is normal in a growing company, and it stays invisible until both roles are written down side by side.

Keep it alive

A scorecard is only worth what its freshness is worth. When the work changes, change the scorecard that same week — a role definition that describes last year is worse than none, because people are then judged against a job they no longer have.