Scoring recalibration — new rating conversion 0/20/45/70/88

Approved by Joon on Sep 4, 2026. This changes the scoring arithmetic only — nothing changes about what the scorer judges.

What ships

1. New rating → percent conversion: 0 / 20 / 45 / 70 / 88 (replaces 0/20/40/60/80). Each rating now pays the middle of its band rather than its floor: 2 = Developing (45), 3 "generally effective" = Solid (70), 4 "integrated, limited gaps" = Strong (88), 5 = Exceptional (100). The 4 sits at the upper end of Strong rather than the true middle (85) so an otherwise all-4 session with one meaningful 5 can reach roughly 90. At 85, one 5 lands around 87–88 and an associate would need several 5s — quietly recreating the problem that made Exceptional nearly unreachable. The 4 anchor is demanding ("fully executed and meaningfully tailored," foundational capabilities present, no foundational gap), so upper-Strong is defensible.

2. Exceptional eligibility relaxed: requires one standout moment rather than a 5-rated behavior in every engagement zone. The human audit on Exceptional is retained.

Considered and dropped

• Automatic full Cultural Fluency credit for a 3 when no cultural opening existed — not implemented. The persona-specific 5/10/15% CF weighting already accounts for differing opportunity, so auto-credit double-corrects for the same issue, and it would let a 3 earn 100% while a genuinely stronger 4 earns 88%. It also overstates the constraint: an associate can surface influences (social media, community, personal style, travel, work, friends) without a customer-provided opening. Existing CF structure and the standard 0–5 conversion stand — at a 5% weight the maximum difference is 1.5 points.
• Alternative scales rejected: +10 across the board (30/50/70/90) and 25/45/70/90 both pay a 4 at 90, putting an all-4 session on the Exceptional line; the flat +10 also gives the weakest sessions the largest lift. The 20/45/67/89 curve is effectively the 85 version.

Impact — retroactive re-score of all ~11,000 sessions to date

• Sessions at 80 or better: 1.3% → 9.2%
• Sessions at 70 or better: 14% → 33%
• Average score: 51 → 58
• About 25% of sessions move up a band; none move down

Typical gain is 6–9 points, roughly the size of one re-try gain today, so repeat practice still shows visible progress.

Implementation notes

• Deterministic conversion in server/alb-identity/elxScoring.js — the model returns ratings and evidence only; all arithmetic stays in application code and remains auditable and replayable from the persisted record.
• Category weights, the CF flex (5/10/15), gates, critical overrides and the 60% eligibility floors are unchanged.
• Confirm the My Team / Teams layer aggregates, band labels, admin reporting and exports all pick up the new scale, and account for the mixed-scale period across the cutover.

Build over the weekend of Sep 5–6, targeting production the following week via the normal CAB path.