I once met a top official in the US space shuttle program who was responsible for signing off on the quality/efficacy of the shuttle’s millions of lines of code. He did this before every mission, in the presence of the astronauts who would be piloting the vehicle. Such an awesome responsibility. I asked him “how do you know that you can assure those pilots that they are safe?”
His response (paraphrased) stuck with me: “I have a dashboard of all the key metrics and I know our processes, so signing off is easy!”
Running an IT service company may not be as mission-critical, but it’s still a great lesson for leaders. If you want a high level of confidence in decision-making, you need a dashboard — a control panel that looks at metrics for how well your team (and processes) are performing.
If you want a high level of confidence in decision-making, you need a dashboard — a control panel that looks at metrics for how well your team (and processes) are performing.
Growth spikes and pipeline divots will happen. A dashboard helps to foresee what’s coming and respond to the inevitable challenges and opportunities that could change a company’s trajectory.
When I was President at Traction on Demand, a Salesforce consultancy that was ultimately acquired by Salesforce in 2022, we grew the company from 200 to 1500 people in five years. That kind of growth is impossible to manage gracefully without the right metrics and dashboards in place. Especially when something like COVID happens.
When the COVID lockdowns hit in 2020, we immediately saw the business impact in our dashboard – a significant number of projects were canceled or put on hold, and 25%+ of our pipeline dissolved nearly overnight. Our revenue forecasts showed within a few weeks that we’d start to lose significant amounts of money. We also knew we couldn’t cut our way to make up for the lost business, so we immediately shifted gears into offense mode.
We created project pipeline by scrambling to help organizations do everything from track available hospital beds and PPE equipment, to make the transition to virtual work. We saw results within a few months and created so much impact that we started growing at an unprecedented rate. Again, all reflected in our dashboards, which proved invaluable at navigating a very uncertain time.
So, what should be on a service executive’s dashboard?
The components of a CEO dashboard
The needs of each CEO and company vary depending on their target market, the size and stage of the business, and the challenges they’re facing in growing profitably. In short, there’s no one-size-fits-all dashboard. However, the most effective dashboard I’ve seen represent a combination of:
1) operational metrics that monitor day-to-day business performance
2) improvement-oriented metrics that track the progress of high priority initiatives
Operational-based metrics
For a CEO, operational-focused dashboard elements should look across core business functions, including sales, marketing, delivery, operations, finance and HR. Together, these metrics can give a day-to-day view of business health.
For a CEO, operational-focused dashboard elements should look across core business functions, including sales, marketing, delivery, operations, finance and HR.
Figure 1 below provides an example of a dashboard incorporating the core operational metrics I would track.
For sales and marketing, a CEO needs to see how well the company is doing at hitting its quarterly targets, but also how the weeks/months are trending for future performance. This data should help answer questions such as:
- What are our best case and worst case forecasts?
- How are close rates trending?
- How much pipeline have we added this week?
- Will we have enough pipeline, based on our close rates, to hit next quarter’s targets?
- How are we doing across new logos vs. expanding existing business?
These are the high level metrics, but you can also get more granular to help guide where to focus attention. For example, which SOWs are set to close in the next month.
Similarly, delivery and operational insights keep the CEO grounded on “today’s” performance and allow them to pull the right levers to address immediate issues. For example:
- Problem (red) customers may prompt executive outreach to a counterpart.
- A downward trend in CSAT or employee attrition may require a more detailed analysis into why.
- A dip in forecasted utilization may drive slower hiring and perhaps steps to manage cash.
The key is to have the right information as quickly as possible in order to take advantage of opportunities or take action to mitigate risks. Having it all on one control panel helps.
For example, historical and forecasted utilization (broken down by geo, group or job level) can indicate if there’s enough work for the consultants. Or if that work is being efficiently delivered in a 40 hour work week. Understanding utilization trends is critical in a services business because utilization ultimately affects profitability.
Supporting metrics such as backlog trends (how much booked work has yet to be delivered), goodwill (non-chargeable labor), and sold/realized bill rates should prompt action when they aren’t where they’re expected to be. The Figure 1 dashboard contains real examples that can guide this sort of decision-making.
For a people-based services business, talent and HR metrics should also be on a CEO’s dashboard, especially if they can immediately impact corporate performance.
For a people-based services business, talent and HR metrics should also be on a CEO’s dashboard, especially if they can immediately impact corporate performance. Attrition rates are a great example – which can spawn next-level down dashboard components around resignations, hiring results, candidate pipelines, forecasted talent vs needs, or diversity metrics if that’s a focus area.
Lastly, although perhaps most importantly, is the company’s real-time financial performance. Data and reports might include revenue billed in the last week, last month and in the current quarter – as well as accurate forecasts for the next week/month/quarter. Having a ready view into cash flow – especially when times are tight – is also important.
Initiative-based metrics
In addition to the day-to-day operational elements, initiative-based metrics may warrant a proactive place on the CEO’s dashboard. Here are three good examples:
1. Resolving causes of high attrition
One company struggled with attrition and customer satisfaction. After digging into the root cause, they found consultants were consistently being assigned to more than six customer projects, and as a result, were simply unable to deliver on expectations. They created a goal to assign no more than two clients per consultant, and created a dashboard component to track this – evaluating weekly progress.
2. Gauging M&A integration effectiveness
There are many metrics to gauge whether an acquisition has been successfully integrated, however, employee engagement is a big one. It’s also a leading indicator for attrition. One company had brought in a tool, CultureAmp, to do a monthly pulse check on how things were trending across groups and regions. They added these results to a dashboard.
3. Planning for rapid growth and hiring
One company was growing incredibly fast into a new segment, bringing on, training up and certifying large cohorts of new employees. Their business and staffing plans were built on assumptions for how fast they could get these employees billable, while maintaining high customer sat. They developed a set of reports to track things like business days to certify, business days to billable to ensure these assumptions held.
Initiative-based elements might up a much smaller portion of the CEO dashboard, but they may drive results on par with the operational ones if they are well selected.
Initiative-based elements might up a much smaller portion of the CEO dashboard, but they may drive results on par with the operational ones if they are well selected. The key is making sure they are meaningful – and retiring them when they are no longer pertinent so that the dashboard stays relevant and effective.
Making a Daily Habit
Having the right dashboard and data is only half the battle. How you use it, and how often you use it, is just as important. If you have a dashboard and aren’t using it every day, then you probably need to take a look at why. If it’s because you don’t trust the data, fix that. If it’s because the data isn’t real-time, fix that. If it’s because there’s too much on the dashboard and it’s overwhelming, fix that.
Having the right dashboard and data is only half the battle. How you use it, and how often you use it, is just as important.
Like that space shuttle director I mentioned earlier, I would start my day, coffee in hand, with a dashboard review. I would use it in discussions with other leaders within the business to talk about what’s performing and what’s not. It helped me push on certain areas in a quantifiable way and show the kind of data-driven decision making I expected from my team.
It helped ensure that we were keeping the business not just safe, but ready to take off like a rocketship if we saw an opportunity. Pun intended.
