Using a Dashboard
As a company matures there are a significant amount of things to manage. Using a dashboard for managing your business provides you and your staff with an overview of your operation and the areas in which you can improve. Not having a dashboard is like steering a ship without a compass or a map.
A dashboard assists you to be on track and align yourself with the goals that you have put in place for the business. Making this dashboard visual assists those who are on board with you to know how to go about getting to the destination and enables everyone to have a conversation about what is required to get there.
Maps were not drawn up for the convenience of one person. These were specifically made larger so that people could stand around them and plot their coarse. Major decisions were made around maps, fleets were mobilised and attacks were planned.
Aliging the Dashboard to the vision
Your business is not that much different. You need to create a compelling vision of where you are going, measure your performance against your targets and adapt according to circumstances. Having a visual dashboard assists your organisation in this process and helps your team to unite around common goals. As your organisation grows you would be able to adapt this dashboard to the changes in your organisation and change the few critical measurements on the dashboard to reflect every departments goals within your organisation. Your visual dashboard should therefore be dynamic and change as your organisation grows. Soon you will find your employees becoming part of the journey rather than mere bystanders.
A visual dashboard used in a larger company.
Take a look at the following video to see some other examples of how visual management is used in companies: