What's Your Score?

It seems that everything is scored. For practically every sport we can think of, there is a score kept. Baseball, basketball, football, soccer, track and field, the Olympics, and more. The score is usually kept in the form of points, but it can also take the form of something else, such as the recent Kentucky Derby, win, place, or show, and how many lengths ahead.


Do you know what your score is at your job? Is there really a score at work, too? You bet there is. If you have a job, you may be receiving a score at every evaluation. If you are trying to get a job, you may have been scored by the hiring manager. Unfortunately, there usually are no points for second place. It’s either win the job or not.

Like it or not, we are all measured against some performance standard. It could be performance metrics. It could be a commission earned based on performance. Certainly, those that are in sales are measured all the time. Those in production are measured by how many produced, and possibly even the quality. Even those in academia are scored, which is often known as “publish or perish”.

So, do you know what your score is? If you don’t, shouldn’t you know it? If not, how else do you know how you are doing according to expectations? In some jobs, it’s rather easy to see. It may look something like a budget to achieve, or a sales goal that must be met. It could be a goal of cost containment, or it could be a number of machines or parts manufactured that meet specifications. Whatever your score should be, it likely revolves around your job performance expectations. Those expectations were probably given to you at the time you first started your job and likely have been regularly reviewed with you during periodic evaluations. Possibly you’ve been working long enough that you are long past those initial performance expectations and you don’t know what your new score is? Wouldn’t it be wise to find out what’s expected of you? That’s just part of good communication between you and your employer. You say you’re the boss? Then it’s likely your board of directors that expects performance.

Your score is how well you are doing compared to those expectations. Many times that score is tied to compensation in the form of commissions or bonuses, but it can also be tied to whether you keep your job or not. That may sound rough, but it’s also reality. For most companies, a score is important for many reasons:

1. It could be simply that a few notes were kept in your employee file during an annual evaluation

2. Scores may be kept for employees that could be ready for advancement

3. Scores are kept for how to split up a commission pool

4. Employees may be scored for consideration for transfer to other jobs

5. And employees are scored for those that need to be let go.

This could, for some employees sound quite tough to deal with and possibly unfair, but let’s look back at that sports team that always has to face the score. What happens to the teams that start with more 100 in training camp and must get their roster down to 60 by the season? More than forty have to be cut. Is that fair? Do you think they want their team to win? Then if they expect to be in the finals, whether that’s the Super Bowl, the World Series, or whatever the sport, they want the best, simply put.

It’s no different in our real life world of whatever employs us. Jim Collins puts it best in his book, “Good to Great”. We must get the right people in the bus and in the right seats. Most companies have to compete with other companies all the time. We have in this country what our forefathers considered fair when adopting the “free enterprise” system. That means that companies must compete to survive, grow, thrive, and “score”. Getting the right people in the right seats is a must for businesses. It’s even true in non-business settings.

So, your best bet is to continue to do the best job you can and strive for your best score. It may mean that you can keep your job for many years. It may lead to advancement and/or to a new position that is your goal to achieve. And, in some scenarios, it could be you that has the better score and gets to keep your job. If you are not on the right bus, then let us know, but in the mean time, keep striving for the best score. It is generally in your best interest.