Leadership Dashboard

By Engineer Delight Makotose

As a leader, you will inevitably face high-risk, high-stakes challenges that require you to respond in real-time to master the moment, generate response options, and quickly evaluate those options before acting.

Data-driven decision-making is more important than ever. Unfortunately, the unsung and overlooked hero is the manager who can turn this gamut of information into a well-designed dashboard.

The formula of Work = Force x Distance. In leadership, the Leader has to take the organization from one state to the envisaged destination as encapsulated by the Vision and Mission. As a Driver of change, the leader should have the tools and equipment to get there. We all know that Human capital and financial capabilities play a pivotal role. However, as the pilot or driver, the leader would need instrumentations to show whether the tank is full or low, what speed you are going at, the temperature, raves, etc. This is at his / her full glare on the car dashboard. The Pilots do constant Cockpit talks, Why? 

Here I am trying to indicate the importance of dashboards. As a leader, to enable real-time response, the leader should be guided by having information at his font and fingertips. 

Dashboards are incredibly important because they condense and organize massive amounts of data so executives and managers can get the most relevant information in the least amount of time. A management or executive dashboard is used to display all measures and KPIs in one place to help managers make efficient decisions regarding the company’s strategic plan. When done right, dashboards provide valuable insight into the health of an organization and strongly influence executive decision-making.

Finance Dashboards

This dashboard is a high-level snapshot of a company’s financial health. It will help you make decisions about the resources you have and how to allocate them.

Marketing Dashboards

How successful are your company’s marketing efforts at generating new sales or customers?

Operations and Safety Dashboards

An operations and safety dashboard is an internal audit tool that helps organizations proactively manage and prevent risk.

Human Resources Dashboards

HR dashboards can manifest in many different ways. They range from reporting on internal, qualitative metrics such as employee satisfaction to quantitative, external metrics like recruiting success rates.

Specialized Dashboards

Specialized dashboards have a more focused purpose than the other business dashboard examples we’ve described. They can be tailored to your company’s particular growth stage, industry, and metrics.

Strategy Dashboards

Strategy dashboards give executives insight into an organization’s performance as it relates to the strategic plan. These dashboards reflect progress toward goals and spotlight specific initiatives that are in play to reach those goals.

A bit of a drill down on the Strategic Dashboard, my most preferred reference point. Managers, need to interpret information, analyze it, plan their response, and then follow up. In other words, Leaders need to manage and mitigate the flag ups.

Project Dashboards

You’ll want to give your executive team a way to keep a pulse on the organization’s projects. They don’t need to know every detail, but the 3,000-foot view will help them prioritize future projects and resources. From a project management perspective, you must have a bird`s eye view from the top. One terrible thing in a project is Scope creep, with a dashboard showing all facets of the project, the leader can quickly pick issues and drill down.

In light of the above, it can be concluded that great managers understand the broader context of the data reported by dashboards, and can translate that data into knowledge that drives effective decision-making. Engineer Delight Makotose is the Director of the SMEs International Expo. For Feedback, you can send an email to demakotose@gmail.com