Build It And They Will (not) Come.

👷🏽‍♀️Build it and they will come? No, they won’t.

In my conversations with data leaders all over the world, I’ve come to learn that dashboards are one of the most frustrating components in the data space.

We’re constantly told (usually by SaaS sales dudes) that dashboards are a crucial element of a data driven organisation. That without them, companies have no ability to make data informed decisions and there achieve the holy grail of data - becoming data driven.

🗑75% of Dashboards Go Unused

Why then, are dashboards so universally under utilised but end users?

Ok so 75% is a number I’ve landed on after numerous conversation with data leaders and in reality the truth might be far worse than that.

As data professionals, we are building dashboards after dashboard, usually after having been asked to by stakeholders, only to discover that those ‘urgent’ reports are either never looked at or are looked at once and forgotten.

Yet here we are pumping them out and maintaining ad infinitum.

💹 How Can We Start Making Dashboards People Use?

Dashboards are data products.

The key word here is: Product. Like all products, whether they be software products or physical manufactured products, there has to be a proven customer need to justify investing in and building them.

🐎A Faster Horse?

Henry Ford famously said, if I’d asked people what they wanted they’ve told me to build a faster horse.

Stakeholders don’t actually know what they need, yet so many data teams pump out dashboards as requested by stakeholders.

Henry Ford knew more about careers than the public did - was he going to let them tell me how to build one? Hell no, he’s the expert on cars and you’re the expert on data.

If they’re telling you what they need you to build, then you tell them to get on their horse!

💊 Discover The Pain

When creating data products for our businesses we can’t take their requests at face value. We need to dive deeper and uncover the pain they are actually experiencing in their area of the business. Then, we solve for that.

We can achieve this by getting to know their area of the business better and understanding what challenges and problems they face. We need to become researchers and problem solvers.

Through this process you may discover that a dashboard is not the required solution at all. Yet, had you built one as requested - you’d have wasted everyone’s time, and particularly your own.

🥛Less Is More

If you want to create dashboards that people actually use, the instead of building many many dashboards, start by building very few. Use them to focus on the core KPIs that underline the company’s overall strategy. Make these very simple reports widely available and resist the urge to enhance or add new metics to them.

If you’re continuously being asked for the same new metrics from multiple teams across the business, then look into adding this new metric only once you’ve validated what problem the inclusion of this metic will solve.

🙅🏼‍♂️Our Value Doesn’t Lie In Volume.

More reports and dashboards doesn’t make you a better data professional. The opposite is actually true. Our job is to make our organisations data and value driven. If they are all looking at a multitude of different metrics then it will be impossible for them to make sound, data informed decision.

It is only when everyone has the same crucial pieces of information that consistent decision making can be make across the business.

⚾👻 If You Build It They Will (not) Come.

This line from the movie Field of Dreams is about a guy who builds a baseball pitch on his corn fields so that the ghosts of dead baseballs pros can get together for a hit.

It’s good advice for ghosts but rubbish advice for Data Leaders like you!

⚡️Whenever you are ready here are a few ways I can help you:

• Data Leadership Career Coaching

• Group Coaching for Data Leaders (starting in Feb 24)

• Excellent LinkedIn Content (give us a follow)

• Google Analytics, Tagging and Looker support