Q #229: What does your dashboard tell you?

In response to that question, most people would ask “Dashboard? What are you talking about?” In a recent blog, Seth Godin cites examples of dashboards that provide useless data and hidden data (e.g. a tachometer, a Garmin 305 watch) whereas “Acumen, on the other hand, has built a charity dashboard that lets them evaluate projects on cost-effectiveness across sectors. It’s a marvel, and it completely changes the way you think about philanthropy… Or consider the ambient dashboards that have been built in surprising ways. One company put pinwheels on a VPs desk. When sales went up, the pinwheels spun faster.”

What’s his point?

“Building good dashboards isn’t difficult, but it’s an excellent marketing strategy. A few brainstorms:

1. If you can add a digital dashboard to your service, do it.
2. If you can make the dashboard public, it gets more powerful.
3. Highlight data that changes behavior.
4. Allow the user to highlight the information that matters to them.”

The dashboard in a vehicle provides essential information (speed, available fuel, etc.) Our Honda Pilot’s dashboard even lets us know when pressure is low in one of the tires. Think about your company as a vehicle. What are the organizational equivalents of an oil change, alignment, tune-up, GPS, compass, clock, tire rotation, etc.?

1. What is your company’s essential information? How do you obtain it? Can you access it instantly?

2. Can you quantify the value of what your company sells? How can a customer measure the value of its association with you?

It is also possible to devise a dashboard for your career. More about that another time.

In The Dollarization Discipline: How Smart Companies Create Customer Value…and Profit from It, Jeffrey Fox and Richard Gregory explain how to measure that value accurately and consistently. In Q&A #231, I briefly discuss their book.

Meanwhile, here’s a link to Godin’s blog:

blogmailfromseth@yahoo.com

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob