What Dashboards Don't Tell Us

Businesses have developed diagnostic tools based on the model of a car’s dashboard. Like all the gauges and icons that assist a driver, a business’s dashboard is designed to present an ‘at a glance’ picture of the health of the organization. Similar to a driver’s ability to keep their vehicle moving forward, executives are able to react to what the graphs and charts on their dashboards tell them.

As someone who drove a lime green bug named Sherbie for a decade, I believe that a car can have a personality; however, its dashboard, even with a flower in a vase, does not. It cannot tell you that there is an ambulance coming up behind you or that a soccer ball just bounced in the street 30 feet ahead.  A dashboard misses the squeaky windshield wipers even as it flashes that a tire pressure is low. A company’s dashboard can reflect trends but doesn’t document what years of experience can tell the manager about those trends. It cannot indicate whether people enjoy coming to work or what the buzz is around the water cooler.


Doing research on my organization’s dashboard got me thinking about what I would include on a personal one. What types of graphs would I use? Would I create a pie chart of my bank account or figure out how to diagram joie de vivre? Do I care about whether I meditate or is it more important to know that when I do, it helps my well-being? Where and how would relationships fit in a box and would each be color coded? Knowing me, I would get caught up in thinking there is a right way to do this rather than just living well as I take periodic inventory of key elements. But, dashboards can be helpful, so, after some contemplation, I reduced my original list of eight daily questions down to these three and will track the Yes/No answers this week to Did I:  

• Experience some private or shared joy?
• Do something helpful outside of myself?
• Do something healthy for my body and soul?

A different exercise would have me mapping the details, but for now, this will be enough. Will you join me in some similar simple dashboard that will record your week? Maybe we can meet over coffee and compare.

Marilyn