Scale B.O.S.S. Evaluation Scoring Guide

How to score Team to Market, Business Essentials, and Key Business Drivers with clarity, consistency, and useful leadership judgment

Scoring is one of the most important parts of the evaluation phase. If leadership does not share the same definition of a negative score, an average score, or a true Yes, the evaluation quickly becomes too soft to be useful. One leader scores based on effort. Another scores based on intent. Someone else scores based on whether the area feels better than last quarter. The result is an evaluation that looks complete but does not give the business a clear picture of reality.

This guide explains how scoring is meant to work in the current Scale B.O.S.S. software, using the Good to Growing Framework as the foundation. It covers the two scoring models used in the platform, how Team to Market, Business Essentials, and Key Business Drivers differ, and how honest scoring flows into weakness work, AI review, and scorecards.

Leadership standard: Score current reality, not plans, effort, or optimism. The purpose of evaluation is not to defend the business. It is to understand it clearly enough to strengthen it.

Evaluation models at a glance

Evaluation	Scale used in the software	What you are judging	What weak results mean
Team to Market (TM)	-2 to +2 for Stage Performance and Resource Allocation	How well each go-to-market stage is working and whether it has the support it needs.	Scores below +1 show a stage that is not yet strong enough to support healthy scale.
Key Business Drivers (KBD)	-2 to +2	How well each critical operating driver is performing right now.	Scores below +1 show a live business lever that needs attention before it damages results.
Business Essentials (BE)	Yes / Maybe / No	Whether a foundational element truly exists and is reliable enough to support growth.	Maybe must be resolved to Yes or No. Items that end as No move into weakness work.

How to use this guide

Use evidence, trends, and repeatability—not good intentions—as the basis for the score.
Treat a 0 as meaningful. It means average, adequate, and functional, but not strong.
Reserve +2 for areas that are genuinely exceptional, resilient, and worth protecting or replicating.
Do not use Maybe in Business Essentials as a softer version of No. Use it only when leadership honestly needs to resolve whether the essential is really in place.

The -2 to +2 scale for Team to Market and Key Business Drivers

Team to Market and Key Business Drivers use the same five-point scale: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. This scale works well because it captures both direction and strength. It does not ask whether the team 'passed.' It asks whether the area is hurting the business, merely functioning, or actively helping.

That difference matters. A school-style grading system tends to make people defensive. The -2 to +2 scale usually creates a better leadership conversation. It gives the middle real meaning. A 0 is not a failure. It simply means the area is average—good enough to function, but not strong enough to be counted as a real advantage.

Score	Plain-language label	What it means	Leadership interpretation	Typical response
-2	Critical weakness	This area is performing poorly. It is clearly weak and is actively holding the business back.	This is hurting us.	Escalate quickly. Fix ownership, process, support, or execution now.
-1	Below standard	This area exists, but it is inconsistent, underpowered, below expectation, or unreliable under normal pressure.	This is not strong enough.	Stabilize it and strengthen it before it becomes a larger problem.
0	Average / adequate	This area is functioning, but it is not a strength. It does not create a major problem, but it does not create a real advantage either.	This is okay, not strong.	Do not panic, but do not confuse it with scale-readiness.
+1	Strong	This area is working well, is reasonably dependable, and is helping the business.	This is helping us.	Protect it, keep measuring it, and continue improving it.
+2	Excellent	This area is operating at a very high level. It is repeatable, resilient, and worth protecting, leveraging, or replicating elsewhere.	This is a real advantage.	Preserve it, learn from it, and use it as a model.

Remember: A 0 is not a crisis. It means the area is functioning, but it is not yet a strength. Many businesses can operate for years with a lot of 0s. They just cannot scale elegantly on them.

How to choose between close scores

When deciding between -1 and 0, ask whether the area is simply uneven or whether it is too unreliable to meet the standard.
When deciding between 0 and +1, ask whether the area is merely functioning or whether it consistently helps the business perform better.
When deciding between +1 and +2, ask whether the area is just strong or whether it is truly exceptional and resilient under pressure.

Team to Market uses the -2 to +2 scale twice for each stage: once for Stage Performance and once for Resource Allocation.

Scoring Team to Market in practice

Team to Market is the most nuanced scoring conversation in the platform because each stage receives two ratings, not one. Leadership is not only judging whether the stage is working. It is also judging whether the stage has the people, time, tools, process discipline, and support needed to work consistently.

TM dimension	What you are judging	Evidence to look at
Stage Performance	How well the stage is accomplishing its purpose right now.	Lead quality, conversion, cycle speed, consistency, customer experience, handoff quality, and whether the stage is producing the outcome it is supposed to produce.
Resource Allocation	Whether the stage has what it needs in order to perform well.	Ownership clarity, staffing, time, budget, tools, process rigor, training, cross-functional support, and leadership attention.

What to look for before you score a TM stage

Score Stage Performance based on outcomes and repeatability, not just effort or activity.
Score Resource Allocation based on fit, not absolute spend. A stage may have money around it and still be under-resourced in the ways that matter.
It is entirely possible for a stage to have strong people and weak support, or generous support and weak execution. Score those realities separately.
Use the notes fields to explain the number. A useful score is one the next leader can understand without having to guess what you meant.

Examples of what the scale means in Team to Market

Example TM rating	What it looks like in practice
-2 in Create Deal Flow	Lead generation is sporadic, channel performance is unclear, demand depends on founder bursts or one-off activity, and there is no reliable engine producing qualified opportunities.
0 in Assess Opportunity	Qualification exists and some deals move cleanly, but standards are uneven, discovery quality varies, and the stage is not dependable enough to be called a strength.
+2 in Create Raving Fans	Customer experience is intentionally managed, satisfaction is measurable, referrals recur naturally, and advocacy is consistently generated instead of left to chance.

Scoring Key Business Drivers in practice

Key Business Drivers use the same -2 to +2 logic, but the judgment is focused on live operating levers rather than customer-journey stages. A KBD is a dial on the control panel of the business: customer acquisition cost, churn rate, gross margin, utilization, fulfillment time, average deal size, response time, or another driver that can materially improve or damage results in the near term.

That means KBD scoring should be grounded in evidence. Before scoring a driver, leadership should know what trend is being evaluated, who owns it, how often it is reviewed, what the recent movement has been, and what would happen if it drifted the wrong way for the next 30 to 90 days.

Questions to ask before scoring a KBD

Is the driver moving in the right direction, holding steady, or drifting the wrong way?
Is performance repeatable, or is it too volatile to trust?
Is the driver visible enough that leadership would know quickly if it worsened?
Does the current level of performance help the business, merely support it, or actively hold it back?

KBDs use the same -2 to +2 scoring logic, but they are organized by live operating categories such as Revenue, Acquisition, Retention, Margins, Capacity, and Other.

Examples of how to think about a KBD score

Example KBD	How to think about the score
Customer acquisition cost	A -2 means acquisition is expensive, poorly understood, or rising in a way leadership is not controlling. A 0 means CAC is measured and generally stable, but not yet a strategic strength. A +2 means channel economics are strong, predictable, and decision-useful.
Customer churn rate	A -1 means churn is being tracked but is too high, too inconsistent, or not improving fast enough. A +1 means churn is healthy, understood, and being actively managed with clear retention discipline.
Gross margin or cost-to-serve	A 0 means the business is functioning economically, but margins are ordinary and exposed to surprises. A +2 means margins are strong, protected, and supported by pricing, delivery discipline, and operating control.

Business Essentials uses a different scoring model

Business Essentials is scored differently because it is not measuring intensity on a sliding scale. It is checking whether the foundational element is in place and strong enough to rely on. In other words, Business Essentials asks whether the business has the structural support required to scale without creating avoidable instability.

In the Good to Growing Framework, the middle judgment is often described conceptually as Needs Work. In the current Scale B.O.S.S. software, that middle state appears as Maybe during triage. Functionally, the idea is the same: the essential may exist in part, or leadership may believe something is there, but it is not yet clear enough, complete enough, current enough, or dependable enough to be treated as a real Yes.

Business Essentials rating	What it means	Use this when…	Avoid this mistake
Yes	The essential is in place and functioning well.	The item is real, current, understandable, usable, and reliable enough to support growth.	Do not mark Yes just because the idea exists informally or because one person can explain it from memory.
Maybe	The essential may exist in part, but leadership is not ready to rely on it yet.	Something may be documented, partially built, outdated, inconsistent, unclear, or not strong enough to confidently count as present.	Do not use Maybe as a comfort score when the honest answer is No.
No	The essential is not in place in a meaningful way.	The process, document, standard, or capability does not exist, or is so weak that it should not be treated as operational.	Do not soften a No because the team has good intentions or plans to build it later.

Quick checks before you mark an item Yes

If a new leader joined tomorrow, could you hand them the process, document, or standard and expect them to use it successfully?
Can leadership point to a current, usable version of the essential, or is it mostly verbal, outdated, or hypothetical?
Does the essential hold up under normal operational pressure, or does it break the moment the business gets busy?

Business Essentials is triaged in the software using Yes, Maybe, and No. The middle state is a practical version of the framework's 'Needs Work' idea.

How 'Maybe' works in the current software

In the current software, Maybe is not a final resting place. The Maybe Resolution step forces a decision. Leadership must either answer the item now as a Yes or reclassify it as a No. That design is useful because it prevents unresolved foundation issues from sitting in the middle indefinitely.

Use Maybe when leadership genuinely needs to resolve whether the essential is real enough to count.
Reclassify it to Yes only when the team can actually articulate and stand behind the essential.
Reclassify it to No when the item is not truly in place or is too weak, too inconsistent, or too incomplete to rely on.

Maybe Resolution prevents leadership from leaving uncertain essentials in the middle indefinitely. Each item must eventually become Yes or No.

The Yes Answer Collection

Only items classified as Yes move into the Yes Answer Collection. This is where leadership writes the actual answer that explains what the business has in place. AI B.O.S.S. can help refine, organize, and format the response, but it should not be used to manufacture certainty where the business does not actually have it.

A Yes answer should be specific enough that another leader could understand what exists and how it works.
If the team cannot clearly write the answer, that is often a sign the item was not really a Yes yet.
Use AI B.O.S.S. to improve clarity, completeness, and consistency—not to mask weak reality.

Only Yes items move into the answer-writing stage. This is where leadership documents what actually exists and where AI B.O.S.S. can help refine the response.

Scoring drives action in the rest of the framework

Scoring is not just descriptive in Scale B.O.S.S. It drives what happens next. Honest ratings create a usable roadmap for leadership. Inflated ratings leave weak spots hidden and make the rest of the framework less effective.

For Team to Market and Key Business Drivers, anything below +1 should be treated as an area that is not yet strong enough to support healthy scale. In practical terms, that means 0, -1, and -2 deserve attention. For Business Essentials, items that end as No move into weakness work. A Maybe does not stay unresolved; it must first become Yes or No.

Team to Market: low or average stage ratings surface where execution or support is weak.
Key Business Drivers: low or average driver ratings expose the live levers that could damage a quarter if they drift.
Business Essentials: unresolved weaknesses become visible as No items and flow into Weakness Review, owner assignment, and impact charter work.

Weakness Review is where Business Essentials items that end as No are assessed, assigned, and converted into accountable impact-charter work.

AI Health Check and scorecard interpretation

After Business Essentials answers are collected, the platform can run an AI Health Check to review the quality and completeness of those responses. This does not replace leadership judgment. It serves as a second pass that can identify shallow, vague, or incomplete answers before the review is considered strong.

The AI Health Check reviews the quality and completeness of Business Essentials responses after the answers have been written.

The Scorecard turns the evaluation into a management view. In Business Essentials, it summarizes the distribution of Yes, Maybe, and No responses and shows response-completion progress. The scorecard is not where scoring happens. It is where leadership interprets the scoring patterns and decides where to focus next.

Read the distribution, not just the completion bar. A fully completed evaluation can still reveal a weak foundation.
Pay attention to where the middle is concentrated. A large cluster of Maybe items usually means the business is carrying uncertainty in areas it should have already clarified.
Use the scorecard as a conversation starter, not a substitute for the notes, explanations, and weakness work behind it.

The scorecard summarizes the distribution of results and shows completion status so leadership can see the pattern of strengths, uncertainty, and gaps.

Common scoring mistakes to avoid

Common mistake	Why it weakens the evaluation
Scoring future intent instead of current reality	It makes the business look stronger than it is and hides the work that still needs to be done.
Treating 0 as a bad grade	It pressures leaders to inflate to +1 even when the area is only average.
Giving credit for effort instead of outcomes	A hardworking team can still be producing weak or inconsistent business results.
Calling something Yes because it exists informally	Informal knowledge in one person's head is not the same as a reliable business essential.
Using Maybe to avoid a hard No	It delays the real decision and weakens downstream weakness work.
Using scoring to blame people	Defensiveness reduces honesty and turns the evaluation into performance theater instead of diagnosis.

How to run an honest scoring conversation

The goal of scoring is clarity, not shame. One of leadership's most important responsibilities in the evaluation phase is to create a conversation where people can score honestly without becoming defensive.

Ask, Is this helping us, is this average, or is this hurting us?
Separate the score from the person. A weak score does not mean someone is bad; it means the business needs to see reality clearly.
Push for evidence. Ask what trend, example, document, metric, or operational fact supports the score.
Do not over-celebrate vague positives. Ask what makes an area truly strong, repeatable, and reliable.
Capture the reasoning in notes so the score remains useful after the meeting ends.

Simple calibration exercise: Before the leadership team finalizes an evaluation, it is useful to calibrate with a short exercise. Score one Team to Market stage and one Key Business Driver using the -2 to +2 scale. Then rate three Business Essentials items as Yes, Maybe, or No. As you do it, ask the same question each time: Is this helping us, is this just average, or is this hurting us? That single question usually makes the scoring model real very quickly.

When the scoring system is understood and used consistently, the entire framework becomes more valuable. The business gets a clearer picture of what is genuinely strong, what is merely functional, and what is quietly creating drag. That honesty is what turns evaluation from a form-filling exercise into a practical leadership tool.