A Dashboard For The Journey

by

Robert’s seventh book, Grow Your Digital Agency will be released soon, in the meantime, here is a little taster of what to expect:

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A Dashboard For The Journey

It is one thing to run a ‘Strategy Awayday’ to give you a grasp of “Where are we now? Where are we going? How are we going to get there?” However, making it happen is a very different kettle of fish.

One of the outputs from the wallpaper exercise is a more detailed business plan.

Before you shriek in horror, I am not talking about a heavyweight 250-page marathon. I am talking about a clear explanation of the who, what, where, why, when and how of the various aspects of your business. Strategy, Finance, Marketing Operations and People plans are the normal headings and the emphasis should be on targets and how you are going to achieve them.

On a monthly basis your senior management team (or board) needs to meet to track progress against the wallpaper. I would suggest a simple dashboard to tell you the basics. Referring back to the FiMO exercise I would opt for a maximum of four measures in each of four boxes as follows:

  • Finance
  • Marketing
  • Operations

This dashboard is like the lights in an airplane cockpit measuring the critical and vital things:

‘How high? How much fuel? How fast are we going? How far to go?’

In the case of your business you measure the things (quantitative and qualitative) that will be indicators of how you are doing.

This exercise is worth its weight in gold. It will help you decide what is and what is not important. It will help you to focus on the real results and not the vanity figures that can so easily distract us.

ACTION – QUICK ‘N’ DIRTY

Select four measures for each of Finance, Marketing, Operations and Growth.  Make sure that measuring these criteria will inform you of your performance.

In real time, this exercise should come after agreeing your Purpose, Vision, Mission, Strategy, Core Success Factors and Key Performance Indicators.

To get your hands on Roberts forthcoming book, email GYDA@robert-craven.com to be made aware of its release date.