Scoreboard

Scoreboards help you establish if you are winning or not. When you have clear goals (lagging indicators) and strategies (leading indicators), scoreboards and dashboards let the players (not the coaches) easily know where they are. Winning or losing. What down is it? Where on the field are we? How much time is left? The data isn’t complicated. It is easily read and easily interpreted.

Start with your leading indicators as the KPI’s for scoreboards. It is easy to get distracted with dashboards. They are easy to create and we have plenty of data. We actually have too much data. Much of it is interesting but useless. It may tell us the score but it won’t tell us what yard the ball is on. Great dashboards focus on leading indicators. They are easy to read and predict great outcomes. If they don’t, get some new ones.

Begin measuring what you can today. It is way too easy to develop very complicated dashboards. We may think we don’t have the right data and need to wait until we can measure it at some distant point in the future. By beginning to measure what we can today, we will start down the road to knowing if we are on track or not.

Encourage speed and agility in measuring sooner rather than later. Speed is important. Simplicity rules the day. Complexity in dashboarding kills the spirit. Let’s build it now should be the mantra. The digital executive will be impatient in this area. We need to move now and we need to move fast. That is all there is to it.

The important thing is that without a true sense of urgency, true change is nigh impossible. Performance measurement shouldn’t be seen as bureaucratic administrivia, nor as a bandwagon fad. It needs to be appreciated in the broader context of continual improvement, capability growth and problem solving. And that’s one of the reasons why a sense of urgency is a critical ingredient. Source: KPI Library

Scoreboards and dashboards help you know if you are on track or not. We all know that simply knowing the score is not a predictor of who will win the game. How many times have we seen a game where one team is ahead but loses? Way too often. In addition to great scoreboards, we need dashboards that tell the players are we on tract to win or lose regardless of the current score.

The employees who are accountable for the leading indicator should develop and report with their scoreboard. When I report my own results, I tend to own them. When someone else does it for me (or to me), it is easy to quibble about the data. That leads to a lot of wasted time and effort. If I play baseball and a key indicator is how many times I get on base (compared to home runs hit), I can easily measure and report how I am doing. 4 at bats and no times on base tells me I need to improve. From this point of view, scoreboards and dashboards should be closest to the point of action as possible.

Scoreboards and dashboards should not cost a lot to implement. The data should be easily available and not difficult to analyze. Costly, time consuming systems will spell the death of any initiative. Digital executives know they need to start simple and improve over time through a continuous improvement process.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Scoreboards help you establish if you are winning or not.
2. Start with your leading indicators as the KPI’s for scoreboards.
3. Begin measuring what you can today.
4. Encourage speed and agility in measuring sooner rather than later.
5. Scoreboards and dashboards help you know if you are on track or not.
6. The employees who are accountable for the leading indicator should develop and report with their scoreboard.
7. Scoreboards and dashboards should be closest to the point of action as possible.
8. Scoreboards and dashboards should not cost a lot to implement. The data should be easily available and not difficult to analyze.