Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajiving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul
Speaker 1: Fello Aledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven point thirty four. Today we're talking about dashboards,
Speaker 2: those beautiful, color coded, number filled screens that sit at
Speaker 2: the center of most leadership decisions today, green lights, upward arrows,
Speaker 2: percentages that look great in a Monday morning meeting, and
Speaker 2: the uncomfortable truth a lot of those dashboards are lying
Speaker 2: to you, not on purpose. Nobody's sitting in a back
Speaker 2: room cooking the numbers. But the data you're seeing, the
Speaker 2: way it's presented, the metrics that got chosen, the things
Speaker 2: that didn't make the cut, all of it is shaping
Speaker 2: how you see your organization and sometimes what it's showing
Speaker 2: you in what's actually happening, are two very different things.
Speaker 2: Let me give you a simple example. A leader I
Speaker 2: know was proud of his team's response time metrics. The
Speaker 2: dashboard showed average response times were down, the numbers looked great.
Speaker 2: Leadership was happy, bonuses were being discussed. But when a
Speaker 2: few customers started leaving. Nobody could figure out why the
Speaker 2: dashboard said everything was fine. It took one honest conversation
Speaker 2: with a frontline employee to find out what was happening. Yes,
Speaker 2: response times were down because the team had learned to
Speaker 2: close tickets faster, not resolve problems better. The metric was
Speaker 2: being gamed, not maliciously, just naturally, because people do what
Speaker 2: gets measured. The dashboard was telling a true story, it
Speaker 2: just wasn't telling the whole story. And that's the thing
Speaker 2: about data. It doesn't lie outright. It just leaves things out,
Speaker 2: and what gets left out is often the most important stuff.
Speaker 2: Here's why this happens. When we build dashboards, we measure
Speaker 2: what's easy to measure. Response times, revenue, units sold, headcount.
Speaker 2: Those are all real numbers. They're legitimate, but they're also
Speaker 2: just the surface. They don't capture morale. They don't capture
Speaker 2: how close your best people are to quitting. They don't
Speaker 2: capture whether your customers actually like doing business with you
Speaker 2: or whether they're just stuck with you for now. The
Speaker 2: things that really predict where your organization is going, those
Speaker 2: are often harder to quantify, and because they're harder, they
Speaker 2: get left off the dashboard entirely. So what does that
Speaker 2: mean for you as a leader. It means your dashboard
Speaker 2: should be a starting point for a conversation, not an
Speaker 2: ending point. When the numbers look good, that's your cue
Speaker 2: to ask why when they look bad, same thing. The
Speaker 2: number tells you something happened, it doesn't tell you what's
Speaker 2: actually going on beneath the surface. The best leaders i've
Speaker 2: seen use data the way a doctor uses a thermometer.
Speaker 2: A fever tells you something's wrong, it doesn't tell you
Speaker 2: what's wrong. A good doctor doesn't just treat the fever.
Speaker 2: They go looking for the cause. Your metrics should work
Speaker 2: the same way. There's another problem worth naming here, and
Speaker 2: it's a cultural one, and a lot of organizations dashboards
Speaker 2: become political. People know what numbers leadership is watching, and
Speaker 2: they focus their energy on those numbers, whether that's the
Speaker 2: right use of their energy or not. When that happens,
Speaker 2: you stop getting an accurate picture of reality. You get
Speaker 2: a picture of what people think you want to see.
Speaker 2: So if you've created an environment where bad news is unwelcome,
Speaker 2: your dashboard will reflect that. People will find ways, sometimes
Speaker 2: very creative ways to make the numbers look acceptable. And
Speaker 2: you'll be making decisions based on a version of reality
Speaker 2: that doesn't quite exist. The fix isn't complicated, but it
Speaker 2: takes courage. You have to make it safe to bring
Speaker 2: you the real picture. You have to be the kind
Speaker 2: of leader who doesn't shoot the messenger, who thanks people
Speaker 2: for hard conversations, who says I'd rather know now than later.
Speaker 2: And you have to get off the dashboard and into
Speaker 2: the room. Sometimes walk the floor, have lunch with someone
Speaker 2: who's close to the customer. Ask your frontline people what's
Speaker 2: actually happening. No filter, no polish, just the truth. Numbers
Speaker 2: can hide things people usually can't not if you give
Speaker 2: them the space to be honest. So here are three
Speaker 2: things you can do this week. First, pick one metric
Speaker 2: on your dashboard that your team has control over and
Speaker 2: ask someone close to the work what they think is
Speaker 2: really driving that number. You might be surprised by that answer. Second,
Speaker 2: look for a number that's missing. What important thing in
Speaker 2: your organization are you not measuring? Ask yourself why and
Speaker 2: whether that needs to change. And Third, create a moment
Speaker 2: this week where someone on your team can tell you
Speaker 2: something uncomfortable without consequences. You don't have to announce it
Speaker 2: as a policy, just be receptive when it happens. Dashboards
Speaker 2: are tools, good ones, but a tool is only as
Speaker 2: useful as the person using it, and the best leaders
Speaker 2: know that data is just one input, not the whole picture.
Speaker 2: So the next time you're sitting in front of your
Speaker 2: dashboard and everything looks fine, let that be the moment
Speaker 2: you lean forward and ask, what's this not showing me?
Speaker 2: That question alone will make you a better leader than
Speaker 2: a thousand perfect metrics ever could. And if you want
Speaker 2: more free leadership resources, head over to Paulfalovalito dot com
Speaker 2: and click on free Stuff. I have over twenty five
Speaker 2: free leadership documents that you can download and start using today.
Speaker 2: This has been the seven minute leadership podcast and I
Speaker 2: thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul Fello Alito podcasts, visit Paulfellowalito dot com