What Data, Microsoft's PowerBI, and Running Taught Me About Leadership

I’m one of those crazy people who spend an unnatural amount of time setting goals, breaking those goals down into commitments, and then holding myself accountable for delivering on those commitments by measuring progress throughout the year. I don’t really remember when I started doing this, but I do remember carrying around a notebook to track tasks and progress when I was in the sixth or seventh grade. So, it’s safe to say I’ve been doing this long enough for it to become part of my personality. I’ve just become more sophisticated over time in how I do it.

The Plan

At the beginning of 2019, I set out to accomplish three goals with respect to my running. I wanted to:

• Run 1,800 miles total
• Run an average 9 minutes/mile pace
• Run at least 27 days out of every month

The idea was to set an anchor goal I had never achieved, which was expressed in total miles. In order to accomplish that, I needed to speed up my average pace. The other option was just to spend more days running, but I couldn’t allocate much more than what I was already committed to due to my demanding calendar.

Bottom line, I simply needed to be able to cover more ground faster. And, finally, I needed to run a minimum amount of days but not expect myself to run every day. Since I travel regularly, I needed to account for the fact that sometimes you just don’t get a run in when you’re on the road.

Tools to Measure Progress

I used an Apple Watch to capture the data, Excel to record the data, and Microsoft’s PowerBI to set up and establish a dashboard to track my progress visually. I chose PowerBI because I wasn’t as familiar with it as I was Tableau, which had been my data visualization “drug of choice” up to this point.

Building the dashboard required me to define the key results that aligned with my desired outcomes. The drag and drop interface of PowerBI was great and matched much of the ease I had experienced with Tableau. I was able to customize and format. And, most important, I was able to link measures together to highlight the relationship between data. (I have to admit my kids were not as impressed with it as I clearly had become.)

And last, the custom dashboard allowed me to cleverly locate “next actions” on the same dashboard. This meant I could manage my entire feedback session on one page. This also allowed me to connect real-time feedback with my ideas about how to resolve any variance along the way.

Mid-Year Check-In

When I came to the mid-point of 2019, I realized I wasn’t going to hit my total annual milage goal given the current course and speed. My running days per month was fine. That didn’t seem to be an issue. I also recognized I was behind on pace, too. I had to make some decisions. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to meet my goal:

• The first decision was to identify which one of the three KPIs was most important. I determined the total annual miles were paramount. I would be the most disappointed if I didn’t hit that goal. You can always speed up your pace and run a few more days per month. But total miles really fuels the other two.
• The second decision was to recognize that while I could still make progress against my goal for average pace, it didn’t need to come at the expense of distance nor consistency.
• The third decision was to acknowledge that I had no difficulty reaching my month number of run days goal. So, I didn’t need to really focus on that. I just needed to hold my own.

In order to determine my path to course correct and get back on track, I needed to increase my total miles. Since I was already running behind schedule at the mid-year point, I was going to have to exceed my monthly mileage goals to make up for the lost mileage in previous months.

One Final Opportunity to Course Correct

When I came to the mid-point of 2019, I realized I wasn’t going to hit my total annual milage goal given the current course and speed. My running days per month was fine. That didn’t seem to be an issue. I also recognized I was behind on pace, too. I had to make some decisions. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to meet my goal:

• The first decision was to identify which one of the three KPIs was most important. I determined the total annual miles were paramount. I would be the most disappointed if I didn’t hit that goal. You can always speed up your pace and run a few more days per month. But total miles really fuels the other two.
• The second decision was to recognize that while I could still make progress against my goal for average pace, it didn’t need to come at the expense of distance nor consistency.
• The third decision was to acknowledge that I had no difficulty reaching my month number of run days goal. So, I didn’t need to really focus on that. I just needed to hold my own.

In order to determine my path to course correct and get back on track, I needed to increase my total miles. Since I was already running behind schedule at the mid-year point, I was going to have to exceed my monthly mileage goals to make up for the lost mileage in previous months.

One Final Opportunity to Course Correct

By the time Q3 came to a close, I had done a follow-up assessment to see exactly where I was in relation to my goal. I was happy to see that my changes really started to show up in September. And even with a quick checkpoint coming out of October, I am more than confident I will deliver on my total annual mileage goal and my average number of runs per month goal. I’ll get close to my pace goal, but it’s unlikely I will hit it. Again, that’s OK. I had already made that concession with myself.

Had I not been tracking and visualizing my goals related to running, I would be in the “Hail Mary” mode attempting to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Or worse, I would have just thrown in the towel on 2019 and started to plan for better results in 2020.

New Challenges, New Leadership

The truth is if PowerBI can help me reach my running goals, how could it change your capacity as a leader to achieve your outcomes and key results? Whether your taking on a personal project or managing a $100 million in annual sales, if you can’t break down your goals into the measures that matter, track them over time, quickly visualize your current state, and make real-time decisions to adapt, you’re sunk before you’ve even started.

Maybe it’s time to skill up and start learning data visualization tools at night and on weekends. It will make you a better leader, help you ask more specific questions, and give you greater peace of mind when it comes to understanding how you spend your days and weeks will determine your quarters and annual outcomes.

New challenges demand new leadership. And technology has made data analysis and visualization more accessible than ever. It’s time to measure and visualize your today, so you can inform how your next actions will change your future.

BEN STROUP is Chief Growth Architect and President at Velocity Strategy Solutions, where he helps leaders design, develop, and deploy data-driven growth strategies. Learn more about Ben and schedule your free 29-minute discovery session today.