Practice
Why your dashboard goes unopened
A board nobody opens is worse than no board, because it convinces everyone the problem is solved.
The short answer
Dashboards get abandoned when every number looks the same whether things are going well or badly. If nothing on the screen changes colour, moves, or asks for a decision, there is no reason to look at it twice.
The three failures
1. No targets
A number without a target is trivia. Revenue of $47,300 is neither good nor bad until you know what you were aiming at. Every number that earns a place on a board should have a target, a direction and a threshold where it changes colour. If you cannot say what good looks like, that is worth discovering before you build the chart.
2. Too many numbers
A board with thirty tiles is a board with no priorities. Attention does not scale, and a screen that shows everything effectively shows nothing. Five to eight numbers on the main board is usually right, with detail one click away for when a number goes red.
3. Nothing changes
If the board looks identical on a good week and a bad one, it is decoration. The whole value is the moment something turns amber and somebody asks why. That requires thresholds, and thresholds require somebody deciding what “off track” means.
The test
Open your dashboard and ask one question: if something were going wrong right now, would this screen tell me?
If the honest answer is that you would have to read every number and compare each against memory, then the board is not doing the work. You are.
What a board that gets opened looks like
- Few enough numbers to take in without scrolling.
- Every one with a target and a direction.
- Colour that means something, and that is usually not red.
- A period control, so “this month” and “last quarter” are one click apart.
- A way to ask why, without exporting anything.
See it on your own numbers.
Thirty days, no card. Start with your figures or a template for your trade.