# Dashboard Management Dashboards are created to [[GOTBook/1. Ready For Final/Personal Philosophy|automate passing important information]]. They are an information management tool. Dashboards allow you to numerically or visually track key projects and departments within your organization. Dashboards are key to growing a business beyond yourself and are useful for improving processes and to ease management over time. You’ll need to reduce the [[GOTBook/2. Final Edits or Revision/First Principles Project Planning#Bandwidth|bandwidth]] that any one business, project, or person takes up if you want to grow quickly and without harm. ## Measured = Managed “What’s measured is managed”. The concept - put forth by Peter Drucker in 1954 - is very simple: having a precise measurement for the amounts you have worked means that your work will be manageable and impoveable. If you want your company to grow, you have to measure things within your company that make it grow. If you want sales to increase, you have to be measuring different pieces of your sales process, and the marketing projects within the company that produce leads. ## Indicators and Metrics There are 3 types of indicators: * Lagging - This will tell you there is an output problem in your system and needs immediate attention. * revenue, churn rate * Active - Mid-process, the first sign of progress or lack thereof is seen here. * sales pipeline, new trials started * Leading - If your leading indicator is red, then it will indicate that your active and lagging indicators will be red as well. Leading indicators are tied to actions we can take. - sales calls made, marketing campaigns launched ### Leading Indicators #### Input Based A leading indicator is the input to produce the desired result, which normally requires an expenditure of effort. Someone has to do something to get the ball rolling. That is what should measure as your leading indicator. #### Controllable A leading metric is one that you can change. If it’s not one you have direct control over, then that is not the right metric. If you can’t tell me exactly how you can change that by pulling a lever or something like that, it is not a good leading indicator. ### Active Indicators #### A Snapshot A dashboard gives a snapshot of the business, but cannot provide deep insight into what happened. Active indicators help you to display the velocity of the process. I use weekly snapshots instead of a live dashboard because they’re cheaper. Real time dashboards start around a few thousand dollars and go up from there, they’re not worthwhile for many young and smaller businesses. #### Experimentation (is the key to success) When you change something in your leading indicator, you should be able to see that effect in the active indicator, and that effect should carry through to the lagging. When you see the effect on the active indicator, you should have an early indication if the experiment was a success or failure. It is the best to design experiments for growing your company around trying to manipulate a specific active indicator first, then moving down to lagging. ### Lagging Indicators #### Output Focused In order for someone to hear about you on a podcast, you have to be on a podcast. In order for you to be on that podcast, someone has to pitch you on that podcast. Get a positive response, and then the podcast can be booked, recorded, and finally published. Publishing is the point at which the desired goal: audience reach, occurs. That makes it a lagging indicator. #### Goals Focused Goals are almost always focused on Lagging Indicators. We can follow those back to the numbers we want to see in our active indicators and our leading indicators. Once we get to our leading, we know the actions that we must take in order to achieve our goal. ## Rolling Up to the Venture Each person's Personal Dashboard should have sections for each one of their [[GOTBook/2. Final Edits or Revision/First Principles Project Planning#Roles| Roles]]. The personal dashboard rolls up the project dashboard. At the project level, some of those numbers should be going up the chain to the Venture Level Dashboard. At the Venture level, some of them will go up to your Master Dashboard. **** Dashboards should be monitored regularly to enable fast, data-driven decisions. For high-level metrics, a weekly or monthly view is often sufficient. For key metrics, daily or real-time monitoring is best. Analyze trends over time to see the impact of changes and spot warning signs early. Early on, focus on a few key numbers like revenue, leads and utilization. As the company grows, additional metrics and more detailed dashboards will be required to monitor growth, productivity and customer experience. The metrics that matter will change over time - be ready to iterate your dashboards and reports. ### The Venture Level Breakdown There are three sides to the Venture Level Dashboard: 1. Gathering new Business 2. Serving the business you have 3. Operational metrics of the business. They could also be phrased as 1. Traction and Distribution - Management of new Business Development 2. Finance and Operations -Management of the company 3. Customer Success - Management of the clients ### Traction & Distribution (AKA Growth) The term “Traction and Distribution” is used because a company is traditionally divided into silos of sales and marketing that do not communicate with each other very well. By combining them, we remind ourselves that they are deeply intertwined. Common numbers to look at include: * Sales * Qualified leads * Top Line Revenue * Inbound Lead Flow * Close Rate * Overall Web Traffic * Marketing qualified leads * Sales qualified leads * Free trial signups ### Customer Success Customer retention is key to a retainer based business like this. Measuring total active clients and recurring revenues gives us a key indicator for business health. On this particular dashboard, the key financial metrics are in the customer facing segment. Businesses with higher numbers of customers or less consistency in fees may find financials more closely related to operations - Churn rate - NPS score - Average revenue per account ### Finance and Operations Finance and Operations, includes everything else that needs to be measured for the internal workings of the business that do not relate to one of the other two categories. That includes accounts receivable, total team hours worked, and even vacation days. - Product Dev Hours - Support Hours - Hosting Costs ## Case Study: General Digital Agency Inc. Let’s walk through what a new client would look like from prospect to close on GDA’s Dashboard. Our example client John Doe. **** #### **Outbound** The initial steps to recruiting a client are either inbound or outbound, in this example, you will be looking at outbound lead generation. This means you messaged John Doe with a proposition, you inform him you make podcasts and ask him if he would be interested. #### **Sales** John Doe informs you that he would love to work with you in. You then give him your rate card, informing him how much you charge. You then set up a meeting to see whether or not John qualifies as a lead, and afterwards he becomes a client. If you see your outreach is producing a lot of interest, but there are no qualified leads, which means there have been no SQL meetings booked, you know something is wrong with either your targeting or messaging. #### **Sales Meeting** You’ll scope the project on a call to determine how much time and money it will cost to do what John wants. So, a Proposal will be sent to the client with that scope of work, a Quote. #### **Operations** This will help determine what you can charge a client in order to make a profit with the number of hours you have in your team that is at your disposal. John’s project is roughly 80 hours a week, you discover you are 30 hours short, and decide to bring someone in to handle his project. By looking at the total hours, you should have a rough estimate of what to charge John. #### **Customer Success** You send him the proposal, and he accepts, and is now an Active Client. That could add onto your monthly recurring revenue, or change your average client revenue. ## Conclusion Dashboards provide the data and insights entrepreneurs need to manage growth in their businesses. As Peter Drucker said, "What's measured improves." Measure what matters most - from leads and sales to operations and customer success. Gain visibility into what's working and not. Start simple with a few key metrics each week. Let your dashboards evolve over time as priorities change. The metrics that matter will shift. Be ready to adjust frequently. No venture scales without data and metrics. Dashboards enable smarter, faster decisions based on fact not gut instinct alone. Want to build a company beyond yourself? Dashboards guide your progress and spot roadblocks early. Time invested in metrics and dashboards pays off hugely. Use them to your advantage. Keep enhancing them. Your success depends on the numbers! Build your dashboard views today. Your company's growth tomorrow depends on insights and decisions from data. Dashboards provide essential visibility. They highlight what's driving results or threatening progress. They transform "firefighting" into proactive management. They reduce guesswork and lead to productivity. ### TL;DR Dashboard Principles - Determine what metrics really matter - focus on key numbers that drive growth. - Start simple but evolve over time as your business develops. Add new metrics and details. - Choose metrics you can directly influence through certain actions or decisions. - Track lagging metrics to monitor outputs; track leading metrics to monitor inputs. - Review your dashboards regularly - daily, weekly and monthly. Analyze trends over time. - Use dashboards to identify what's working, what's not and spot potential issues or milestones. - Share relevant metrics across teams and levels - personal, project and company-wide. - Enable proactive, data-driven decisions rather than reactive "firefighting". - Focus extra effort on metrics you monitor the closest. What gets measured gets improved. - Keep iterating and improving your dashboards. They should reflect your top priorities. - Use dashboards to assess progress against key goals and growth plans. - Make dashboard reviewing a regular habit and call to action. Discuss as a leadership team. - Allocate resources and make key business decisions based on the insights from your data. - Continually add metrics to gain more visibility and control across all areas of your business. - If metrics in one area start to trend downwards, look upstream to determine the root cause. - Let dashboards guide but not dictate - use the data to inform strategies in an intelligent way.