Progress and Confidence - what's the score?

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 the percent we have progressed 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 50% 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?

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 you are progressing.

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 7 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. Your progress should always reflect the percent achieved of the measurable component of the outcome. You input the percentage complete onto the outcome. As mentioned above, the confidence score is your confidence in achieving the outcome and is scored on a scale of 0 to 10. 

Both values, progress and confidence, are reflected as a percentage, so a confidence score of 2 is reflected as 20% on the outcome. At the goal level, the progress and confidence score is the average of each of the related outcomes.