Does your organization drive on mirror views, dashboards or front window view?

2 – Driving Dumb

Dashboards are like thermometers, they let you know the temperature. You then can decide how hot or cold it is.

But do they tell how hot or cold it will become?

This is the part 2 of the article discussing how organizations are used to driving down the road to meet their goals using the analogy of Car.

A typical dashboard showing control parameters

Dashboard is a single window or page with collection of two or more informative real-time displays indicating different parameters generally related to each other

Dashboards are meant to present the most current status of the situation. It has indicators that are updated at defined regular intervals to reflect latest measure and gauge. It shows the progress in graphical easy to understand format which also makes it popular than traditional reports. Management team prefers to refer to dashboards as it is more comfortable to comprehend and provides most current status instantaneously. Besides, dashboards at times are configured to show some trend information too.

A particular advantage of dashboard is that it can be customized to react on occurrence of any abnormalities or possible abnormalities, which makes is a smarter than the user monitoring it. 

But is it possible just by gazing at the dashboards to steer the way ahead, supposedly no! Because dashboard’s inherent feature is to display the most current position and not about indicating what lies ahead. For example- The dashboard shows how far the car has travelled? How much fuel is in stock? What components of the organization is functioning well or which of them are not working; basically alerting using the Red, Amber, Green (RAG) status?

Business Dashboard View

However, what it doesn’t show is the pathways in front and where are you headed.

Secondly, all dashboards require calibration before they can be referred, else the presentation is worthless. The indicators have to be configured and tuned to show the actual value against the different thresholds. Again it becomes ever more complicated when applied to an IT enterprise where the technology changes constantly and newer components are inducted into the system. Most times the relevance of the measurement is lost when changes to the technological environment are not reflected on the dashboard metrics

Making sense out of the dashboard is as dim-witted as referring to a bunch of graphical displays if there is no correlation of base thresholds and environment information

Another point to note is that any action on the dashboard alerts is mostly reactive because though it shows the latest of the data, the events have already occurred. The most that Dashboards can do, is display the record of what is occurring and not the projected.  Only when upcoming is known, management can be aware and can take steps that are pro-active and strategic. 

Still dashboards are the preferred tool when it comes to appraisal of the current state. What is required is more than just current state knowledge. Predictive analysis combined with the knowledge of the present condition provides the organization with the clear view of the path ahead and knowledge to avoid incidents.

Does your organization drive on mirror views, dashboards or front window view?

1 - Driving Blind

‘You cannot drive your car using just the rear view mirrors’

Most organizations and their departments that I came across during my advisory had an astounding commonality, they were utilizing reports that fed them with mirror view information and even as still others used dashboards.

A mirror view is a line of sight that shows the reflection and in case of a moving object, it shows events that have already taken place, which is; past information. When an organization chooses to carry out decisions based on the events that have already happened, they do it using a mirror view reports. It is not uncommon to find organizations that follow this approach.  Surprising is, while almost all of these made use of the data that was few week old, some of them were even older.

Past data can be good for “Lessons Learnt” strategy, but devising it as part of everyday culture makes the organization reactive, less forthcoming and unsighted. Agility is impacted and accidents are waiting to happen. The information that is presented can be skewed or as the warning sounds “Objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are”.  Too much delving into the past, over a period, will lead to loosing focus on the future.

Few other dangers of analyzing past data

• Its past data! It might not hold relevant
• Wrong side view. Imagine the consequence when a wrong view is presented, the resultant action might be wrong.
• ‘Objects appear closer’ syndrome. This syndrome can lead to wrong analysis of the impact causing anxiety or misjudgment.
• Regular usage of past data leads to “All is well” feeling till a major incident

Then does it make the Mirror View Reporting a no good option? Well no, because you still require to determine what might strike from the rear or when it is safe to change lanes (tactic) or verify what's happening in your back seat (Operations health), but there is a better way to steer your organization to reach its destiny and that is using Front Window Views

Ok, So Dashboards are useful and sometimes better than the Mirror Views, but they are still not effective when it comes to achieving business objectives.

So, what’s in your rear view mirror, if anything, that’s holding you back?

The next article will discuss further on Dashboard and Front Window Views