100 Ways to Motivate Others : How Great Leaders Can Produce Insane Results Without Driving People Crazy

 the
numbers per-
son for your team. There’s no way you’re going to have a
Score the Performance

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motivated team here, Megan, until you do your homework,
put the numbers in front of you, and 
talk about those num-
bers
when you talk to your people. If you’re their coach,
and you are, then you talk about the game and the score.”
“Well, I played a little basketball in high school,” Megan
said. “Maybe I can relate it to that.”
“Imagine your basketball coach during a game. Your
team comes to the sideline, it’s late in the game, and your
coach says, ‘Now I haven’t looked at the scoreboard for a
while, so I don’t know how many points we’re down, or
are we up? Anyway, here are some plays that I think we
ought to run after the time-out.’”
Megan smiled and said, “That would be a coach that I
wouldn’t have any confidence in whatsoever!”
“Why not, Megan?”
Megan said nothing.
“Aren’t you that coach, Megan?”
Megan said, “I think I see what you mean. My best
coaches were people who rewarded numbers and got
excited.”
“Right! Great leaders are the same. They are leaders
who call team members and say, ‘Hey, I just got your num-
bers for last week. Wow, that’s better than you’ve done all
year!’ These are the leaders people love to follow, because
they always know whether they are winning or losing. They
always know the score.”
We reminded Megan that earlier in her team meeting
she had said to her group, “Well, you guys are really try-
ing hard and I know you are making the effort. I drove by
last night and I saw your lights on late, so I really admire
what you guys are doing. You’re really giving it the old

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college try.” We told her that she might be on the wrong
course with that approach.
“What was wrong with saying that?” Megan asked.
“It’s wrong because respect for achievement is replaced
by respect for ‘trying.’ Megan, listen, we have a phrase in
our society’s language that sums it up. When someone is
willfully obtuse and ineffective, we say that person doesn’t
‘know the score.’ Why? Because ‘knowing the score’ is
the first step in all achievement.”
What we wanted Megan to see was that this mistake
of hers was immediately correctable. It was only the mis-
take of not looking over some numbers before sending
an e-mail or making a call.
But that one little mistake will give her team the im-
pression that they’re here for reasons other than winning
and achieving precise goals.
The coach has to be the one to explain to the team
with tremendous precision exactly what the score is, ex-
actly how much time is left, and exactly how the strategy is
based on those numbers. When you have a numbers-based
team, you know when you are winning, you know when
you’ve had a good day, you know when you’re having a
good run, and you know when you are not.
That creates a wonderful sense that there is no hidden
agenda from this leader. So look for ways, as you commu-
nicate with your people, to improve and increase the way
they are measured and, especially, to increase the con-
sciousness of that measurement.
But it has to come from you. You can’t wait around
for the company policy to shift. That’s what most people
do. They wait for their own management to come up with
some kind of new system, new scorebooks, new posters,
Score the Performance

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something like that. But don’t do that. Don’t wait. Have it
come from you.
It has to be