Latest / Executive Careers with Fexingo: VP, C-Suite, and Senior Leadership Career Strategy / Why Top Executives Keep a Career Scorecard
Transcript
- Lucas: So, Luna, I was talking to a chief operating officer at a Fortune 100 company a few weeks back — and she told me she reviews her own career the way she reviews her business: quarterly, against a one-page scorecard. Luna: A scorecard for your career. That's intriguing. What's on it? Lucas: Four buckets. Mandate, network, learning, and energy. Each one gets a score from one to ten. And then she writes one sentence on what would move the number up. She's been doing this every quarter for six years. Luna: Six years. That's discipline. Most executives I meet are so busy managing the business they never manage themselves. Lucas: Right. But here's the thing — she almost didn't take the job she has now because the first scorecard she filled out, before she even joined, flagged a big gap in the learning bucket. She could see she'd be running a playbook she already knew cold. Luna: And she took it anyway? Lucas: She did. Because the mandate score was a nine — the board was giving her real authority to restructure, something she'd never had before. So she went in knowing she'd have to engineer her own learning curve outside the role. Luna: So the scorecard isn't about saying yes or no. It's about knowing what you're trading. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes it so different from the typical 'am I happy' gut check. It forces you to be specific. This COO — let's call her Sarah — she tracks something she calls energy per meeting. Not hours. Not output. Energy per meeting. Luna: Energy per meeting. I love that. What does that look like in practice? Lucas: She rates, in her head, after each significant meeting: did I leave this feeling more energized or more drained? And she keeps a tally in a notebook. After a month, she can see patterns — which recurring meetings are consistently draining her. Luna: And those are usually the ones she should delegate or restructure. Lucas: Or eliminate. But the real insight is when energy per meeting starts to drop across the board — not just one bad week. That's when the role itself might be the problem, not a few toxic meetings. Luna: How do you separate a bad patch from a structural issue? Sarah's been doing this for six years — she must have some signal. Lucas: She looks at two consecutive quarters. If the energy score is below a five for two quarters, and the learning score hasn't gone up — that's her signal to start a serious job search. She says it's saved her from at least two roles she would have stayed in two years too long. Luna: Two years too long — that's the cost nobody calculates. I remember a study from a few years back that said executives who stay in a role past their learning curve see a performance dip that follows them to the next job. Lucas: That's the one. From the Center for Creative Leadership — they found that leaders who remain in a role more than eighteen months past the point of mastery actually see their external market value drop. Because their narrative becomes 'that person who managed the same thing for five years.' Luna: Which is brutal, because staying is the safe choice. You're not failing, you're not quitting, but you're quietly depreciating. Lucas: And here's the kicker — Sarah almost didn't notice it herself. She told me she was in a role a few years back, and the scorecard kept telling her something was off. But she rationalized it. 'It's a busy quarter.' 'The board is restructuring.' Sound familiar? Luna: Oh, I've been there. You convince yourself it's temporary, and then a year goes by and nothing's changed. Did she have a tipping point? Lucas: She did. It was actually a conversation with her husband. He asked her one question — 'if you could fast-forward five years and you were still in this job, would you be proud or disappointed?' And she had to admit she'd be disappointed. That was the signal. Luna: That's a powerful question. But it's also easy to avoid asking yourself that when you're busy. Lucas: That's why the scorecard is so useful. It makes you ask the question every quarter, whether you want to or not. And it gives you data to back it up. When Sarah had that conversation with her husband, she could pull out her notebook and say, 'Look, energy per meeting has been below five for six months. It's not in my head.' Luna: And I bet that made the conversation with her boss a lot easier too. She could go in and say, 'Here's my learning curve plateauing, here's my energy dropping — let's talk about what a different role or mandate would look like.' Lucas: That's exactly what she did. She went to her CEO and said, 'I'm not leaving tomorrow, but I want to have a real conversation about my trajectory here.' And because she had data — not just feelings — the CEO took it seriously. They ended up creating a whole new division for her. Luna: That's the best-case scenario. But not every conversation ends that way. Lucas: No. But even if it doesn't, you've done the hardest part — you've admitted to yourself that something needs to change. That's the first step to actually doing something about it. Luna: So how does someone actually start this? If I'm a senior leader listening right now, and I've never done anything like this, where do I begin? Lucas: Start small. One page, four columns. For the next thirty days, after each significant meeting, just jot a plus or a minus for energy. Don't overthink it. At the end of the month, count them up. Luna: And then what? You've got a number. Now what? Lucas: Then you look at the other three buckets. Mandate — are you still being given real decisions, or are you just executing? Network — are you meeting new people inside and outside the company, or the same five? Learning — are you genuinely learning something new, or is it the same playbook? Luna: And then you set a simple goal for the next quarter. Like, 'I'm going to have two conversations with people in a different industry' or 'I'm going to ask for one new project outside my remit.' Lucas: That's exactly it. The scorecard isn't meant to be a burden. It's meant to be a mirror. And the best part is, you don't need anyone's permission to do it. It's the one thing in your career you fully control. Luna: Speaking of things you control — we're ad-free because listeners like you chip in a few dollars to keep us going. If this scorecard idea has earned a coffee, we'd love it if you bought us one at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, no pressure. It's just a nice way to support the show. And honestly, if you've ever gotten one useful nugget from us, that coffee keeps the lights on. Luna: Alright, back to the scorecard. Lucas, you mentioned that Sarah almost didn't take her current job because of the learning gap. How did she handle that once she was in? Lucas: She was deliberate about it. She told her boss in the first month that she wanted to be involved in any cross-divisional projects, especially anything tied to new technology. And she made a point of meeting one new person a week outside her reporting line. Luna: So she treated her learning like a KPI rather than a nice to have. Lucas: Exactly. And the result was that when she did her first quarterly review, her learning score had already moved from a four to a six. She was creating the growth she wasn't getting from the role itself. Luna: That's a great example. I think a lot of executives assume that if the learning isn't there, the only answer is to leave. But you can also manufacture it. Lucas: Right, and that's the nuance. The scorecard helps you see the difference between a role that's fundamentally broken and a role that just needs you to be more intentional. Those are very different problems. Luna: So who's this really for? Is it just for people at the top, or could a VP at a mid-size company use this too? Lucas: Honestly, I think anyone who manages people or P&L could use it. The buckets are universal. But it becomes more critical as you go up, because the higher you rise, the more your career decisions affect not just you but your family, your team, your company. Luna: And the higher you rise, the lonelier it gets. You can't always talk to your peers about your doubts. The scorecard becomes a private conversation with yourself. Lucas: That's well put. And I'll add one more thing — Sarah told me that the scorecard has also made her a better boss. Because she now asks her direct reports: 'What's your energy per meeting like?' and 'What are you learning?' It's become a coaching tool. Luna: That's a great way to end. A tool that helps you, and then helps your team too. Maybe the most underrated career strategy is just paying attention. Lucas: That might be the takeaway. It's not about making big dramatic moves — it's about the regular check-in with yourself, so you don't wake up five years from now wondering where the time went and why you're still in the same place. Luna: And if you do wake up there, you'll have the data to do something about it. Lucas: Exactly. So this week, grab a piece of paper. Write down those four buckets. Put a number next to each. And ask yourself the question: if nothing changes, would I be proud or disappointed? That's a start.