Have You Ever Driven a Car Without A Dashboard?
Then why would you try to run your business without one tailor-made just for you?
The original dashboard was a plank of wood nailed to a carriage in front of which one or more horses trotted as they pulled you along. Imagine sitting in your Sunday’s best suit, and off goes your horses down the muddy lane.
Where do you think those clumps of mud, and even worse, were flung each step the horses took? Yes, backward onto you, the driver, and the not-so-happy passengers. The dashboard was introduced to arrive with relatively clean clothes. It quickly became an essential part of the carriage and the horseless carriage, which we know as the first automobile.
Today, the dashboard in the modern car provides us with seemingly endless bits of information about the condition of the vehicle, road conditions, best routes to take to arrive faster — or to travel along a more scenic route — weather conditions, and even about whether it is time to take a break or not for a tired driver.
The dashboard, however, wasn’t always this efficient. Just a little over a decade ago, it pretty much only showed us speed, RPMs, quantity of gas, engine temperature, mileage, and whether or not the engine needed servicing. There were a few other add-ons, like maybe a clock with the date, but not much was happening there.
Running Your Business Without a Dashboard
Do you recall what happened to people when they first drove horses and buggies without dashboards? Yes, they were covered with only God knows what. In the recent past, companies had teams of marketers and number-crunchers sitting in smoke-filled offices trying to figure out the likes and dislikes of their customers. It was a dashboard-free world; some companies derived information from the spreadsheets and succeeded, and others just vanished in the night.
Let’s go back to our car analogy. It’s 2023, and your company is in a pitched battle with competitors to get customers to choose your products. As a new company that is fast, flexible, sleek, and nice to look at, customers are flocking to you in droves. Sales are through the roof, and your market share is rising so fast that it’s even a bit scary. Can you keep up with the consumer demand? Can you maintain the quality? If a customer gets burned once, they might be able to forgive, but twice and quickly, your reputation could be ruined.
Look at the next image. Even though your company handles like a Porsche, this is your dashboard. This is the 1984 Pontiac 600STE, one of the best cars built that year. It’s a great vehicle, but this is not a dashboard for a fast-moving, modern company.
This is what your dashboard should look like:
When you get behind the wheel, you probably realize that a lot of complicated stuff going on under the hood. This is why you have mechanics and trained experts to check under these things. It’s the same with data analytics.
A lot happens every minute of every day in your company and consumers’ minds. As a top manager, you have to make fast and accurate decisions to steer your company out of trouble, get it around bottlenecks, and cruise forward to your destination. You can’t spend hours each day poring over the data. You need a dashboard that provides all the information necessary for making the best decisions based on a comprehensive view of the company’s operations, all at a glance.
Ask yourself this question: Is your dashboard the best for your company? Or, are you using a clunky and outdated one like in a 1984 Pontiac 600STE when you are really driving a 2017 Porsche Panamera?
