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Scoreboards and Scales
“Common sense is not common practice”

Scoreboards

• People play differently when they’re keeping score. If you doubt this, watch any group of teenagers playing basketball and see how the game changes the minute scorekeeping begins. However, the truth of this statement is more clearly revealed by a change in emphasis: People play differently when they are keeping score. It’s not about you keeping score for them.
• If You Confuse Them You Lose Them
  • The scoreboards must be visible and easy to read. Often, we create our own “scoreboards” or record keeping tables that wouldn’t make any sense to a parent or ranger.  If the scoreboard isn’t clear, and age appropriate, the players will soon abandon the game.
  • Do you remember the first time you heard the scoring method for tennis? I thought the game looked fun, but the scoring made me feel like I had been held back a grade or two.
• Everyone enjoys winning. We can unlock the power of this principle by keeping score.  Bowling through a curtain might be fun in the beginning; but if you can’t see the pins fall it will soon become boring, even if you really love bowling.
• List of Scoreboards
  • Advancement Posters
  • Parents Advancement Report
  • Uniforms
  • Rally’s
  • COAs

Scales – Using Proper Measures

We often measure things that are neither predictive or influenceable toward our goals.  If your goal is to lose weight and each week you jump on the bathroom scale to measure your weight, you’ll most likely never achieve you goal.  The bathroom scale isn’t predictive of weight loss and you can’t influence the measurement because it only takes a measure based on what has already happened.  However, if you measure the number of calories you take in each day and the amount of time each week you spend exercising you can very easily predict your weigh loss and you will be at your goal weight in no time.

• One ranger goal maybe to retain more boys each week. What are a few scales or measurements we could use to affect this goal?
  • The last thing you do this Wednesday night is the first thing you’ve done for next Wednesday night.
• We could measure attendance. This would give us a measure of how many boys attended and if that number increased, we’d know.
• We could measure absentees. Granted, simply knowing who wasn’t in attendance might not be all that helpful until we acted on the data.  By sending out a card, making a phone call and expressing sincere concern we would greatly affect a family’s Ranger experience and in turn affect retention.
• Could you measure smiles

Not every predictive and influenceable measure is easy to uncover, but with some effort and creativity they can be the most important data used to successfully affect your goals and your outpost.