Hey managers... where's your speedometer?

IS YOUR BUSINESS DRIVING BLIND?

Running your business blind is analogous to driving a car with no dashboard: you lack vital information such as a speedometer and fuel gauge ensuring you get to your destination safely and efficiently. Managing people and work without this dashboard or information feedback can result in sub-optimal outcomes such as lost productivity and lower people retention.

‍‘Without data, you are just another person with an opinion’ - W. Edwards Deming

Is your business driving blind? Consider the following questions.

1. What speed are your going at? What’s your fuel level?

Is your team delivering its initiatives at a speed that is aligned with the business’s goals?

2. Is your engine light on?

Does your team need you to take action? Do you know of any challenges that your team may be facing that need your attention? At any point, are you aware of any team members who have been unable to pursue their aspirations and are feeling disengaged or discouraged?

3. What is your RPM?

How is your team performing? Is the workload that your team is managing appropriate or sustainable? What is the quarterly trend of your team’s performance and engagement? Is it improving, stable or worsening?

If you cannot answer the above questions for your team, you are driving blind. It is time to upgrade your work with a dashboard! ‍

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WHERE DO I FIND A DASHBOARD?‍

There are solutions available in the market to help you with this. Unlike cars though, the dashboards are not standardized so you will need to know what to look for. The key elements of an effective solution include:‍

1. Invisibility. The dashboard solution should not be dependent on your team members needing to key in the required data. Ideally, your team members do not have to think about the dashboard. They should have a solution that adds value to them by helping them execute their work. It should be intelligent enough to capture information that can be an effective dashboard.‍

2. Universal access. For the dashboard to be effective, it needs to be useful to both team members and managers. There should be a version of the dashboard that is useful for each team member to see how they are performing, and another version for managers that aggregates this information across the team.‍

3. Real time. The dashboard needs to be real time and not cobbled together at the end of the week or month. At the same time, it needs to show how performance is evolving over time by comparing previous years and quarters.

As challenging as it is to truly create and maintain high performance teams without a dashboard today, it will be even more so in a remote working future. This is the time to invest in this space and get ahead of the competition.