Mar 3, 2010

Do you need a dashboard?

Some business owners say they have been running the organization without any dashboard and yet successful. Some think they have to spend additional time to update the scorecard. Some others perceive dashboard as a costly tool. Some organizations tried, but still struggling to meaningfully measure what is important.

In early 90’s, when the ISO 9000 wave started hitting the Indian IT industry, the same issues were there and Project Managers were managing their projects without a proper project plan. Project Planning and Tracking process was very ad-hoc and the success of projects often depended on the heroism of the project managers. I was managing a team of 50 at that time, yet couldn’t get an MS Project, because it was not popular and it was costly.

Today, a typical C-Level Executive (CXO) manages several strategic initiatives that are critical for the organization to create and maintain their competitive edge. They may continue to use tools such as project plans, status reports, budgets to manage their operations. With these tools, they could get swamped in flood of data and operational issues; they may lose focus on their strategic priorities.

We expect every project manager to have a project plan. Similarly, Scorecard/Dashboard is a tool that every CXO must have. In fact every role in the organization should have an associated dashboard that has some metrics corresponding to their key goals. My belief is that, 5 years from now, if a CXO doesn’t have a dashboard, he will be out of the game! Period.

Do you know that CXO Dashboards can help you to arrive at scorecards/dashboards for every critical role in your organization?

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1 comment:

  1. Thomas,

    Very insightful blog.

    Dashboards are necessary for CXO and all the top/Middle level for effective management. The same will help us to get to the critical information without getting lost in the sea of data which systems today generate!

    Regards
    Praveen KN

    ReplyDelete