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Case Study: Deploying a Strategic Performance Dashboard

The IT function of a global utility company consisted of 6 departments, with 700 employees and an annual budget of £120 million, and required a dynamic and interactive dashboard to drive performance linked to their strategy. A multi-disciplinary team used remote and agile methodology to develop a performance dashboard with real-time KPIs linked to their strategy, with an improved process, and Senior Leadership Team engagement.

Achievements

68% increase in KPI relevance

>30 Staff hours saved per meeting

Dynamic PowerBI dashboard and meeting review process

The Customer Challenge

The leadership team used monthly performance review meetings to understand how well their organisation was doing.

They were using a 50-page PowerPoint presentation, to which they copied and pasted Excel graphs and commentary. This took up not only leadership time to create, prepare and review, but also placed high demand on their direct reports.
The charts were not standardised and required explanation every month.
The review meetings lasted 4 hours, a significant demand on all their time. Due to the preparation required, the data was always out of date, it was difficult to perform any deep-dive, and to diagnose “what if” scenarios.
The business leaders would often lose interest and stop engaging when a discussion happened at a detailed level about single events within a specific function.

So something had to change…

"How does a Senior Leadership Team dynamically know what the performance status of their organization is?"

Engaging a multi-disciplinary, agile team

To achieve success, a need was recognised for specific expertise around senior leadership engagement, strategy deployment, and developing dynamic dashboards linked to their strategic objectives. So, with PMI’s support, a joint team was created consisting of members of the organisation’s internal Continuous Improvement function, with active engagement from key people within the IT function, including 1-2-1 relationships with the CIO and his direct reports.

No Surprises

The entire project was conducted virtually, with team members contributing from locations across the globe, including Russia, Germany, and the UK. Part of the success in working this way was the mantra “no surprises”, which was adopted by the whole team. The team leader and team members knew the status and actions through short daily morning huddles where progress on sprints was reviewed. There was also frequent, focused 1-2-1 engagement with all key stakeholders.

Overcoming Complexities

As with many projects, it began with a very specific request and challenge, and during the act of discovery more and more elements were uncovered which warranted addressing; this included identifying that many data collection streams had previously been disabled. Thus the team had to ensure that the scope evolved whilst continuing to be well defined.

The Leadership Team were guided through the first elements of Hoshin Kanri strategy deployment, and new data sets were created which were specifically linked to the strategy.

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The Results & Benefits the Customer Achieved

A new strategic framework with a KPI hierarchy was created
Clearly defined performance objectives and operational definitions were developed
All relevant measures were linked to the strategy with a focus on high-level metrics relevant to leadership processes
The KPI set was reduced from 50 pages with multiple KPIs per page to 16 Key Performance metrics – with the ability to do deep-dives where required
A dynamic Power BI dashboard was built
A 3-step process for conducting meetings was developed using PDSA to refine and enable leadership to become comfortable with the new ways of working
Meeting time was reduced from 4 to 1.5 hours
The Leadership Team was engaged, following re-education on the correct use of data, analysis and its display in graphical form
1-2-1 performance coaching was embraced

Ongoing Improvements

Three months after the project finished, the CIO told us the processes are maturing, the KPIs are developing, and there is continuing standardisation of how to measure, analyse and report on KPIs linked to the strategy.

So much so, that other parts of the organisation are wanting a piece of the same pie! His response is spot on. They ask: “can I have the same performance dashboard please?” and he replies: “it’s not the dashboard you need, it’s the process you need to adapt”!

Would you like to improve the effectiveness of your strategy?

Over the last 35 years we have built our business by delivering results for our clients. All executed by our team of true performance improvement experts, who have held senior roles in industry, sat where you are, and understand the real-world challenges of running a business. This lets us apply pragmatic solutions to your problems, not just the ‘out of the box’ approach taught in a training course.

Our team get stuck in. We roll our sleeves up and work with you to deliver your performance improvement goals. Contact us today and take the first step towards transforming your goals into results.