Plans, goals & the un-intended consequences of green dashboards

If your dashboard is green, you are asking for trouble. You have decided to be no greater than you were before.  That is going backward.

In the business of service delivery, process improvement, or pretty much anything else, you only get what you ask for. It is incredible how many organizations (and people) go through life without a clear vision for where they want to end up. You would not likely embark on a vacation by climbing in the family car and heading out with hopes, somehow, to have fun. More likely, you would pick a specific destination, build a timetable, budget, and create particular navigation. 

Yet in many operations, we find vague or ambiguous goals for the future. Sure, we hear things like "customer-friendly' or 'world-class,' but these clichés never seem to translate into a specific set of definitions or goals that cascade across the operational ecosystem.

High performing operations and processes, on the other hand, always have a clear definition and set of time-bound goals for their service. It is vital to invest the time to clearly define what level of service your customers must receive from fulfilling your value proposition. That definition must then be cascaded such that every person in the operations KNOWS how they affect the outcome. It must be measurable, and you must measure it over time. Most of the time, the target for the metric should become more aggressive over time. 

My go-to method for expressing the plan for execution is with balanced scorecards and a dashboard. All of the critical dimensions of the program are captured here and then cascaded to the team – each team member taking metrics and targets from the master scorecard. The dashboard turns green when the objective becomes a reality and red when missed. It is on display for all to see, is actively talked about, and, ideally, is real as compensation at stake. 

By the way, if you're thinking, 'I have a dashboard, so I'm good on this one,' consider this: is your dashboard green? How long has it been green? The best way to teach an organization to be complacent is to accept a green dashboard. 

There is a human tendency to attach failure or incompetency to a red dashboard. Being comfortable with a red dashboard is very counter-intuitive and counterculture in many organizations. It is also tantamount to inviting entropy to come in and envelope the organization. But, the truth is that deep inside of the organizational DNA, it knows that things are not what they could be.  Accepting green dashboards is the stuff of deeply worn cowpaths.

One of the first things I do when walking into a new engagement is to ask everyone I meet two questions;

1. What is your prime goal?

2. How are you progressing against the goal?

The answers are telling. I quickly learn if there is a plan with goals established, alignment around that shared goal, and is it measured. I also get some sense of perceived progress. The team will tell me what the culture and attitude are about the plan.  Is there a passion, or is there a dull going-through-the-motions feel? All too often, the number of answers I get are equal to or higher than the number of people I ask.  There should be one answer.

 Multi-varied answeres is the very embodiment of the failure to translate corporate strategic plans into actionable tactics.

I learned the hard way that my responsibility as a leader was to translate the corporate strategy into a meaningful plan with goals for everyone. Transparent line-of-sight connectivity between C-suite speak, and my team was up to me.  Leadership's role is to communicate a clear plan.

In business as in life, you get what you expect and ask for. Celebrate turning a metric green and party hard. Carry the people that made it happen up and down the halls on shoulders. Give them differential recognition and even differential rewards. Come in the next day and thoughtfully raise the bar. That is the true nature of continuous improvement.

Try not to focus on the dashboard, however.   It is just a tool for expressing and communicating progress towards a goal.   The real pearl here is the simple notion of thinking through the plan and establishing the goal. 

Make it the plan. Make it a cause. Make it matter.   

Make it unreasonable.  Make it greater than... 

After all, a reasonable goal never spawned a digital revolution. 

To learn more or open a conversation with Van, head over to https://evermore.biz