Issue No. 190 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a book and CD-Rom to help you create dashboard reports—to reduce information overload, yet increase meaning. Delegate your reading to your best report writer. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Dashboards: More Meaning
You measure what you value. You can’t manage it—if you can’t measure it.
Stating the obvious, this week’s author writes, “Governing boards do not need more reports or more information. What they do need is more meaning—and the dashboard report is one practical tool for conveying meaning directly and succinctly to hard-pressed board members.”
Lawrence M. Butler builds his case well. “The dashboard report helps nonprofit leaders focus their attention on what matters most in their organizations, and, in doing so, gain greater insight and ascribe greater meaning to other available data.”
If your monthly or quarterly reporting system (leading indicators, measurements against goals, financial updates, etc.) for your business or nonprofit is like most—the reports have grown exponentially. Information overload has become a core value! Report readers are confused. Report writers are over-worked. Paper companies are thrilled. (Memo to self: invest in Xerox.)
There is help. BoardSource has created a very simple tool for tracking progress. “Dashboards are nothing more than user-friendly tools for displaying performance measures,” says Butler. The 50-page book, with ample examples of report templates, includes a CD-Rom report builder with easy-to-understand instructions.
If you don’t currently use dashboard reports, read just a few pages and you’ll be a dashboard convert. What’s an often-overlooked byproduct of thoughtfully designed dashboards? “They provide a learning opportunity for both board and staff: What is working well? What went wrong? How can the organization improve and fulfill its mission?”
One of BoardSource’s key principles is that “exceptional boards are results-oriented. They measure the organization’s advancement towards mission and evaluate the performance of major programs and services.” Do your current programs scream “results-oriented?”
Don’t let the book/CD-ROM cost deter you. I predict this one tool could shorten board meetings by 15 percent.
Note: You must order this resource directly from BoardSource. Visit their website and search for The Nonprofit Dashboard: A Tool for Tracking Progress, by Lawrence M. Butler. On the website, by the book’s description, you can download a 3-page color PDF with 15 different dashboard charts and graphs (no charge).
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) If most board members are honest, they would admit to whining in the hallways about the acronyms used by staff in monthly reports. They’re confusing and rarely understood. Make a list of our Top-25 Acronyms. Are the definitions crystal clear to all report readers?
2) What is the single most important thing we measure every month or quarter? Do 100% of our board members, our CEO, our senior team and our middle management staff members agree that this is the Number 1 Measurement? Why or why not?
Two Letters: BP - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Crisis Bucket, Chapter 13, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to plan now for your next crisis. It’s not if you’ll have a crisis, but when. Just ask BP about the Gulf oil spill.
Step 1: Appoint a crisis coordinator and network that person with crisis coordinators in other organizations. Provide a budget for training. It will pay off.
Visit the Management Buckets website to download a handout for your next staff meeting, “Plan Now for Your Next Crisis.” Plus click on the link there for the Christian Security Network, a national organization dedicated to the advancement of security, safety, and emergency planning for Christian churches, schools, ministries, and missionaries.
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