Strategic dashboards: Designing and deploying them to improve implementation

Strategy and Leadership

Volumn 40, Issue 5, 2012, Pages 24-31

  Allio, Michael K ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84865824417     PISSN: 10878572     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/10878571211257159     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. The Balanced Scorecard is a proprietary name originally coined by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in their article: "The Balanced Scorecard-measures that drive performance, " Harvard Business Review, Feb. 1992. Many versions and derivatives proliferate today.
2. Gartner survey, cited by Advanced Performance Research Institute site: www.ap-institute.com/ research.aspx. In Gartner's annual survey of 1,200 CIOs, Business Intelligence systems remain the top priority for four consecutive years, from "2005-2009: magic quadrant for business intelligence", January 2010, www.gartner.com
3. Management Tools 2011: An Executive's Guide, Bain website: www.bain.com/publications/businessinsights/ management-tools-and-trends-2011.aspx The 2006 survey cited that 70% of firms deployed the Balanced Scorecard. In the 2011 edition, a full 63% of survey respondents reported that they planned to use Scorecards in 2011. The proportion of businesses using some form of dashboard is arguably even higher, if we expand the definition.
4. The failure rate of performance management implementations is cited as between 56% (deWaal, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management (2009) Volume: 58, Issue: 4, Pages: 367-390) and 70% (Andy Neely, Mike Bourne, (2000) "Why measurement initiatives fail, " Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 4, Issue: 4, pp. 3-7).
5. See also Gartner Business Intelligence Report, January 2011, which reports that 70%-80% of Business Intelligence projects fail.
6. Many foundations and the nonprofits and agencies they fund increasingly invest in post-intervention evaluations. Higher performing ones take pains to move from convoluted, complicated "theories of action" to a straightforward, one-page logic chain to spell out their strategic intent, clarify the players and sequence, and characterize categories of cumulative results, over time. This process helps them articulate clearer metrics, greatly facilitating the pivot to a dashboard to monitor performance. For a good example, see the GAVI Alliance's "2011-15 business plan and measurement framework" (www.gavialliance.org/library/gavi-documents/strategy/)
7. For more information about the selection of metrics, see Michael Allio (2006), "Metrics that matter: seven guidelines for better performance measurement, " Handbook of Business Strategy, Vol. 7 Iss: 1, pp. 255-263.
8. Target-setting is a complex art: stretch goals can inspire, but those that are not backed up with reasonable resources often undercut staff morale and confidence and undermine both the dashboard and leadership credibility; they also threaten to derail performance monitoring sessions.
9. Managers are often tortured by the Catch-22 of presenting too much or too little: granular, disaggregated data cover the bases and allow for deeper probing by the Board or senior exec team-yet take up too much space, and invite even more detailed questioning. At the same time, big picture views of rolled up data sets satisfy those in search of a holistic snapshot, yet frustrate Directors searching for more close-grained analytics. A good solution is a dashboard technology that allows for both: what one executive termed the "beauty of the toggle button. " In general, a good rule of thumb is that the quantity of indicators presented decreases as the authority level of the audience reviewing them increases.
10. For an excellent discussion of the power of careful design in displaying data, explore Beautiful Evidence, the book by Edward Tufte (www.edwardtufte.com). Especially appealing is his discussion of "sparklines, " the "small intense simple datawords" or trendline charts that are increasingly appearing in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, and elsewhere. His data:ink ratio counsels managers to maximize the information conveyed per pixel.
11. Management Tools 2011: An Executive's Guide, Bain website: www.bain.com/publications/ business-insights/management-tools-and-trends-2011.aspx A full 63% of survey respondents reported that they planned to use Scorecards in 2011.
12. For a spirited discussion of cultural barriers and the psycho-social factors that come into play to diminish the credibility of metrics (and the dashboards that display them), see Hammer's article "The seven deadly sins of performance measurement, " MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2007.
13. The politics of dashboard production and change management cannot be understated, especially as the tool is used more frequently by senior management or the Board. Establishing explicit rules, processes, timetables, and accountabilities can help reduce friction.