DASHBOARD

Y our management team needs a heads-up when bad ne ws is ine v- itable. Unfortunately , unless you un derstand the cause and effect r elationship between your objectives, measur es, and initiatives, you’ r e going to be stu ck in a r eactive mode as you car een to war d chaos. Dashboar ds sho w you what’ s happening right no w . But sometimes, you need to understand what will happen in the futur e. That’ s wher e leading indicators come into play . By balan ci ng leadin g indi cators (measur es that help you pr edict issues) with l ag ging in dicators (measur es that sho w you what’ s gone wr ong or right), you’ll be able to see when condition s ar e g oing to g et difficult and have a bi t of time to plan for and anticip ate them. To mak e an early warning system work, you’ll n eed managerial accountability for your in dicators. Leadin g and lagging indicators ar en ’t enough—you need to be able to look at both types of indica- tors and understand wh at is causing them to mo ve in an y dir ection, whether it is o ver all economic conditions or something sp eci fic to your or ganization.

While driving, if you only focus on what’ s dir ectly in fr ont of you, you run the risk of missing the truck that’ s about to sideswipe you. The same is true for businesses: you need information that’ s compiled fr om acr oss your company , not just fr om data sour ces that ar e imme- diately available (in your office, department, or on your fl oor) so you can see the whole pictur e of what’ s going on in your organization. The same information that’ s difficult to gather acr oss the organization can be e ven mor e difficult to organize str ategically if and when it’ s compiled. Dashboar ds ar e useful tools for pr esenting big d ata—you can slice and dice small pieces of data numer ous way s and still find ne w thin gs to talk about. Ho we ver, management r e vie ws hinge on wide d ata—d ata that lives in sour ce systems acr oss the company , plus emails, manage- ment insights, and other factors. It’ s important to r ecognize that a dashboar d may n ot have a wid e-enough scope; wide data needs to be able to be link ed conte xtually , not just pr esented i ndepend en tly . Some or ganizations try to have multiple dashboar ds: one f or financials, one for customers or stak eholders, one for oper ations, and on e for HR. These disconnected dashboar ds will r esult in a disconnected or ga- nization because you will be making decision s indepen dent of each fun ction and not optimiz ing decision s for the enti r e or ganization .

Str ategy should be at the cor e of e very major business d ecision . But str ategy is a long-term game—it shouldn ’t change based on the last hour’ s, day’ s, or even month’ s operational results. Dashboar ds ar e optimized to sho w these r eal-time oper ation al metrics. W hile these measur es ar e critical to tr ack, str ategic measur es offer a long -term vie w . For e xample, while a measur e mig ht be “ gr een ” based on the dashboar d’ s formula, it might be “yellow” for a long-term str ategy . Onl y with a linkage to th e str ategy does this mak e sense. S tr ategic linkage gives you th e details about ho w all th e pieces fit together, what can go wr ong, and ho w to incr ease perf ormance—ulti mately helping you answer the qu esti on “ Ar e we doin g the righ t things?” n ot just “ Ar e we d oing th ings right?” Another way to put this: mak e sur e your goals ar e link ed thr oughout the entir e or ganization, among departments, divi - sions, and the whole enterprise. Y ou should not have some depart- ments working to e xpand services w hile you have an or ganization goal of focusing your activities.

No w that you kn o w mor e ab out when a dashboar d isn ’t enough, you can mak e decisions about installing the other parts necessary f or a well-oi led machine. To find out mor e about what parts ar e availabl e and ho w the y can rev up your business, click her e to talk w ith a ClearPoint e xp ert.