The Weekly CEO Scorecard Text
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
Matt Gray requires the CFO of every business in his portfolio to text him a CEO scorecard every Friday. It contains month-to-date revenue, expenses and profit, the same figures for last month, percentage to target, a projection for where the month will land, and — critically — three to five implications of the financials: what the CEO should be most focused on next week. The finance owner has visibility of every metric in the business, not just the P&L, so they can trace a revenue miss down to its actual cause, such as a show rate of 63% against an agreed 80% target. Gray's rule is that before he signs off for the weekend he instigates the action plans and tells the relevant owners, so Monday starts with the bottleneck already being attacked.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Appoint a finance owner with full metric access
A CFO, fractional CFO or general manager owns projections, cash in bank, collections and payment terms — and can see every metric in the business, not only the P&L.
Watch out A finance owner who can only see the P&L can tell you revenue is down but never why.
- 2
Model the year and set the monthly target
Forecast when you hit the goal — a million a month, say — then track actuals against forecast every month so you always know whether you are on track or off track.
Pro tip Keep the forecast as a section beneath the actuals in the same dashboard so you can scroll down and check at a glance.
- 3
Fix the standing fields of the text
Month-to-date revenue, expenses and profit; the same for last month; percentage to target; and what the month looks like it will land at based on what they are seeing so far.
Pro tip Keep it as a text message to your phone, not a deck. The format is what makes it survive weekly.
- 4
Demand three to five implications, not just numbers
The finance owner must interpret: what do you see in these numbers that I should be aware of and be most focused on over the next week? Bubbling up numbers is only half the job.
Pro tip They do not need full context on how to fix the problem — they only need to point you at the right area.
Watch out Without this, you end up telling people to 'make more revenue' instead of finding the bottleneck underneath it.
- 5
Instigate the action plans before you sign off
On receiving the Friday scorecard, tell the relevant owners which area you now see as the bottleneck, so they enter Monday morning already executing on it.
Pro tip Pair it with a red/amber/green status message per business area, plus what is already being done about each red.
In the wild
The scorecard shows revenue running behind target. Instead of relaying that alone, the CFO looks a layer deeper across all the metrics: enough leads are coming in, enough calls are being booked, but only 63% of people are showing up to calls against an agreed 80%. The implication sent to the CEO is not 'make more revenue' but 'the show rate looks like the bottleneck right now'. Before the weekend the CEO tells the owner of that area, and Monday morning starts with the show rate being fixed — rather than hiring more closers to solve a problem that closers were never causing.
→ The real bottleneck was identified and being worked on within days instead of being masked by a headline revenue number.
Ali's only handle on finances came from monthly management accounts delivered with a Loom walkthrough — always describing the previous month, so he never felt he knew where the business stood right now. His GM had recently started sending a Friday Slack message covering each area of the business with a red/amber/green concern level and a short description, but month-to-date finances were not on it. Adding the finance metrics and the 'so what do I do about it' layer to that existing weekly message was the obvious upgrade rather than building anything new.
→ A same-week financial picture replacing a month-lagging one, using a reporting habit the team already had.
Common mistakes
Learning your numbers a month late
Management accounts arrive weeks after the period they describe, so by the time you see a problem it has been compounding for a month. A weekly month-to-date snapshot gives you a chance to intervene while the month can still be changed.
Asking for numbers instead of implications
A finance function that only reports figures pushes all interpretation back onto the founder. Requiring three to five implications each week forces the owner to actually own the finances and points the CEO straight at the bottleneck.
Throwing closers at a show-rate problem
Without a leader who understands the sales numbers in and out, you accept the diagnosis you are given and hire more closers when the real defect is close rate or show rate. Someone on the leadership team must be able to spar with the sales lead on root causes.
From the transcript
“what I do is I require any CFO in any of my businesses to text me a CEO scorecard on to my phone every Friday”
“if you were to give me say three to five implications of the financials what do you think I need to be most focused on…”
“it's not that we need more leads our close rate is an Abomination”
From the episode
Scale Your Business From $10k to $100k Per Month - Matt Gray
Matt Gray