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Not By the Dashboard Light
David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Despite all the attention given to executive dashboard solutions, some essential gauges are commonly overlooked. These gauges come as standard equipment on every human involved in every project effort, but are often ignored in favor of a few, often misleading, bright lights. Real success often requires that we rediscover the other indicators.
Common project and organizational dashboards amount to a few so-called idiot lights. These binary indicators possess one attractive feature — they are simple. Hence the label "idiot light." These gauges illuminate when sensing a potentially critical situation. Idiot lights suffer from two limiting factors. The first: they sense only the absence of something, giving no hint in their feedback of the source of any resolution. The second: they are attached to easily measured, rather than necessarily meaningful, components.
Any idiot can sense a difference and illuminate a light. It takes a master mechanic to determine from scant evidence how, if at all, anyone should respond.
The real world comes accessorized with contradictions, situations that cannot be meaningfully assessed by simple, binary indicators. Whenever we discount our own judgment in the face of these contradictions, we hobble our response.
Among all the writing focusing upon the essential components of operational dashboards, I find some useful gauges commonly …
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"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso |