I was working through a multi-quarter forecast with a client recently. Just the normal exercise: what's the number, and what's it based on.
I asked how the forecast compared to what account health predicted. The answer: probably a bit lower than the health suggested.
Worth a closer look. So we checked the current quarter too, the one already in motion, and found the same gap there. Forecast running behind what health data supported.
That sent us to the accounts carrying the most churn risk, the ones the quarter would hinge on. We looked at when each health score had last actually been updated.
Months. Some of these scores hadn't moved in months, sitting there confidently while things beneath changed.
Nobody was slacking. The CSMs on those accounts were busy with good work: accounts escalating, accounts just getting started, accounts coming up on renewal. But the work wasn't making its way back into the numbers leadership used to judge renewal.
This isn't a people problem. It's a visibility problem.
Tactical work is legible. You can look at a CSM's week and see it full of accounts needing attention. Health decay is the opposite. It doesn't announce itself. A score doesn't drop because a champion went quiet or priorities shifted internally, it drops because someone went and checked. Skip the checking, and the number just sits there, stale but confident, telling a story that stopped being true a while ago.
CSMs fall into this constantly, and not because they don't care about strategy. The tactical stream is right in front of them, demanding a response. The strategic signal requires someone to go looking for it on a day nothing is forcing them to.
Urgent work screams, important work whispers.
Leadership falls into it too. A dashboard with a green or yellow status feels like the truth. It's easy to trust it and never ask: when was this actually verified, and by what process? Health scoring only does its job when it's predictive and planful. Stale health isn't lying to you, it's just showing what it knows.
The discipline this takes is uncomfortable, because it means someone has to choose, regularly, to step back from the accounts yelling the loudest and go verify the ones that are quiet. That will always feel a bit wrong in the moment, but it's always the right call.
Staying strategic isn't free. It costs you some good, important, urgent things you'll have to "not yet" to, in favor of the thing that actually tells you the future, and the truth.