Manage by the Dashboard Light
Giving line managers access to metrics that matter is important, but most dashboards fail because the systems stop there. They do not establish a clear link between cause and effect, between numbers and action. Say that sales are down for the day. Why? The metrics that could trace the cause and narrow accountability often aren't present or aren't presented in a way that would let the user figure it out.
Kheradpir is trying to change that. High-level metrics screens appear as a tabbed browser page. Within each tab, there are drill-down links to narrower metrics. His metric screens also carry the name of a person deemed responsible for that particular activity, with contact information and a link to Verizon's instant messaging system. It's a sure way to get people to use the system.
Kheradpir has a screen he calls "The Wall of Shaygan" that shows live links to the more than 100 major IT systems around Verizon. Each system blinks green, yellow or red. When Kheradpir sees a system moving into yellow, he pings the administrator responsible. When he first set it up and the pinging started, employees wondered what had hit them. "They all started saying: 'What is this Wall of Shaygan and when can I get one? I'm tired of getting calls from Shaygan'," he laughs.
Before calling, Kheradpir often checks written logs that are attached to many of the IT systems, in which IT employees can explain why metrics have gone out of line. Forrester's Orlov says dashboard systems at many companies lack this kind of mechanism for employees to respond to and explain problems.
Still, says Kheradpir, there is a simple way to avoid getting calls: Keep your metrics in an acceptable range. "If these metrics aren't moving the way you want them to day in and day out, pinging the employees is the least of our problems," he says. "It's much better for us to jump in and try to fix it rather than have an explosion much later."
Kheradpir says that all his calls have raised morale in his department rather than lowering it. "My organization is becoming more self-mobilizing around what they need to take care of. Over the months I have pinged them less and less. My organization is a lot more agile and we're all a lot more together."
As with most knowledge management systems, the return on the investment (which Kheradpir will not reveal) is hard to pin down. So Kheradpir is measuring the acceptance level, which is high among managers. "When I became CIO, I had a mission to make this thing stick," he says. "And I'm happy to say that it has been embraced more than I ever hoped for."
If Kheradpir's dashboard effort had its own dashboard, it would be trending up - for the first time in 20 years.
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