Doug Kreitzberg

Death by Dashboard

by

Two years ago, I had all the operations in my business put together dashboards — metrics on many aspects of our business (from sales calls to retention) — that could help us understand what was working and not working before we saw the results in our P&Ls. Since then, the dashboards have been extremely helpful in focusing our attention and adding more energy and resources where needed.

But dashboards, as helpful as they might be, are no substitute for thinking broadly. Dashboards (or metrics, or formulas or whatever set of tools you have which measures your business) are constructed based on your business model, your knowledge of the model and your ability to gather data with respects to that model as it exists today. Dashboards do not discriminate between good or bad models; they simply describe it.

And what they describe are the hundreds of critical tasks that managers and employees need to pay attention to every day. These are the “Critical but not Important” tasks Stephen Covey writes about. You can’t ignore them. They need to be done. However, these tasks may not be the ones needed to deal with something unforeseen or to exploit the next new opportunity.

Most financial dashboards did not describe the financial collapse of 2008 because they were not built to describe it — it was not in their models. Likewise, many health insurance brokers are scrambling to define themselves in the new world of Health Care Reform; a world in which the old dashboards did not anticipate.

Clay Shirky writes in his blogpost “The Collapse of Complex Business Models”, that businesses begin to fail when they become too complex to deal with changing realities. I actually think it’s simpler than that. Businesses (or individuals) begin to fail when they misread the processes and metrics used to describe the success of their model for the world itself. They fail when they focus too much inward. If complexity is an issue, it’s an issue if it impedes the ability to communicate with (and receive communication from) the world outside the model. It doesn’t matter if you’re AT&T or the florist on the corner. If you’re not paying attention to how people are buying and how their buying activities are beginning to change, your business will suffer.

Don’t get me wrong. Dashboards are important; they are good at telling you whether a process is on track or not. But they can’t be confused — and they often are — as an accurate forecast tool to predict how your business overall will fare in the future. A dashboard is no substitute for strategy. Dashboards are linear, specific, measurable. The world is nonlinear, chaotic, and challenging to determine ahead of time which cause will lead to which effect.

The key is to do what is critical, but raise your eyes to look over the dashboard and really look around you. Leave time to play around with what the world tells you is important. And “play” is the operative word, because if you want to predict something which cannot be predicted, you’ll have to make up a lot of stuff (and test them out in your make-believe world) as you go along.

Stay Hungry

by

Thanksgiving Sunday is hardly the day to talk about keeping hungry.  If you’re like me, you’ve had three days of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and pies, plus all the weird side dishes that your mother served and that you hated growing up but now can’t do without.  You’re probably sitting in front of a TV, watching the umpteenth football game of the weekend, in a near comatose state with your hand idly swimming in an empty potato chip big.  Hungry? You’re convinced you don’t need to eat until Christmas…..wait, are those chocolate covered pretzels in that tin over there?

But, as we approach the end of this year and the beginning of another, it pays us to be hungry.  Being hungry forces you to be alert, to be dissatisfied with the way things are and to search for ways to reach your goals.  Hunger feeds desire and its energy fuels innovation.

If we remain stuffed and satisfied with ourselves and the way things are, we run the risk of losing to a faster, more agile and hungrier competition, who will be chewing our legs out from under us before we have a chance to get off the sofa.

So, pat yourself on the back for your accomplishments and be grateful for all that has been given to you.  Then, step back from the table, pause,  and think about your goals that you have yet to achieve.  Let the hunger for those goals begin to gnaw at you and you will have a new sense of awareness of how to achieve them and the commitment to actually get things done.

Surface Area

by

I’m on a green tea kick and this weekend I was researching tea pots, specifically one called a Yixing tea pot.  The Yixing is a clay pot and, according to the description, because it is clay, it is porous, which means that the surface area is many times larger than a traditional teapot.  This provides, among other things, a faster heat time and the ability for the pot to retain water, or to be seasoned.
 
Of course, this got me thinking about business.  If a business is to be successful, it must be continually searching for ways to increase its surface area, to increase it’s touch points with its clients, its competitors, its vendors and its community. Businesses which focus too much within may have great processes and procedures and even a great “culture”, but are so dense that they let nothing in — whether innovation, dissention or new customers.  These type of businesses have a contracted surface area and are less adaptable to change or growth.
 
This is a danger I think every organization faces as it grows — that more time is spent on internal issues than external, and that the time spent on external issues is not adequately communicated to the rest of the organization to help overall growth.
 
The way I’ve tried to address this is by focusing on growth areas on a weekly basis; not so much as to follow up on what was to be accomplished, but to brainstorm ideas to promote growth and to communicate what’s working and not working as quickly as possible to the rest of the organization.
 
But if these discussions don’t reach out into the frontline, then you won’t take full advantage of the resources you have.  Managers need to be focused on: 1) engaging with customers and clients and frontline staff; 2) improving methods for the overall organization to engage with customers, clients and frontline staff; and 3) sharing, learning and communicating what works and doesn’t work with their peers.
 
Increasing the surface area of your organization doesn’t make you weaker.  As you know, clay has a tremendous capacity to withstand extreme heat.  It makes you stronger.
 

Three O’Clock Breeze

by

I’ve spent this Memorial Day opening our place up in Montana.  It’s not a tough job and I get more than a few of hours of time enjoying the lake, learning how successful the resident loons have been in building and maintaining its nest, exploring the logging roads and being continually amazed by the views of the Swann and Mission mountain ranges in the distance.

Our place sits on the edge of a lake, tucked in a corner rarely used by water skiers and abutting a marsh from which we typically see cranes, osprey, blue heron, bald eagles and loons.  In the mornings, the lake is still, reflecting the sunrise against the tamarack and ponderosa that surround its shoreline.  However, each afternoon, typically around three pm, a breeze from the southeast picks up and surface of the lake is broken by unending waves.

My family has been coming to this lake for over sixty years. During that time, the 3 o’clock breeze has been a constant.  The nesting loons, bald eagles, osprey, blue heron and cranes have been a constant.  And it’s no small stretch to imagine that all have existed for far longer than we have been around.

In our world of increasing change, we are quick to ask, “what is the next new thing?”  We want to be on the leading edge of innovation, because, we feel, that is where success lies.  Heros are made by discovering new worlds and doing new deeds, not reliving past experiences.

I am not immune to these siren calls.  I, too, want to be able to see what’s around the corner and be there before the rest of the crowd arrives.   But, determining what innovation to pursue requires an ability to fine tune out static, to down play what’s sexy and the identify that which has the capacity to endure.  And, in order to do that, you need to have an innate sense of what remains permanent.  Because, when you come right down to it, change is nothing but a reaffirmation of certain unchanging rhythms, whether they reflect natural selection, the need for man to be a social animal, or, the desire of man to push himself beyond limits.

When you become aware of these rhythms, you then can be aware of what changes occurring around you are worth your attention.  You will also be in a better position to take advantage of that change.

I hope you have used this holiday to take a pause, to reconnect with your own 3 o’clock breezes, to be aware of the permanent so you can be in a better position to welcome the change ahead.