“Like the control panel in your car, a virtual dashboard on your office computer screen displays info that heads off disaster”
For years companies have used dashboards to show at a glance how well they’re meeting their financial goals. Obtained via software applications, web-based apps, or widgets and viewed on computer screens, dashboards display such metrics as sales, expenses, and debt levels.
And the idea has spread to other departments besides finance. IT might use a dashboard to track various upgrades it has under way, legal might have one to monitor the status of contracts or litigation, and HR might employ theirs to display EEOC compliance metrics and labor costs.
All this is fine. But it does not go far enough. As a longtime executive coach and consultant, I think C-suite executives should use dashboards as a matter of course—and I will go even further: I believe CEOs should harness their power (as some of my clients have started to) to track qualitative issues as well as quantitative ones.
Source: Business Week
